Fletcher gives us a library that feels more like a neglected attic than a place of learning. The air is heavy with the smell of rotting leather; the chairs are torn, the doors creak, and the books themselves are shabby, jammed together, marked up by children, and worn thin by generations of hands. He turns those books into a ragged chorus—old tramps who say, “We, though you broke our backs, did not complain.”
The speaker, though, is not moved to preserve them. He sounds tired and a little revolted by the decay, saying that if he could, he would bury the books quickly or give them to a clean fire. The mood is airless, sour, and faintly resentful: there is no cozy reverence here, just an urge to wipe away things that have outlived their use.