THE BRITISH MUSEUM READING ROOM Under the hive-like domes the stooping haunted readers Go up and down the alleys, tap the cells of knowledge -- Honey and wax, the accumulation of years -- Some on commission, some for the love of learning, Some because they have nothing better to do Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden The drumming of the demon in their ears. Cranks, hacks, poverty-stricken scholars, In pince-nez, period hats or romantic beards And cherishing their hobby or their doom Some are too much alive and some are asleep Hanging like bats in a world of inverted values, Folded up in themselves in a world which is safe and silent: This is the British Museum Reading Room. Out on the steps in the sun the pigeons are courting, Puffing their ruffs and sweeping their tails or taking A sun-bath at their ease And under the totem poles - the ancient terror -- Between the enormous futed Ionic columns There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces The gutteral sorrow of the refugees. -- Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) son of Anglican rector, teacher, staff writer for BBC 1941, wrote radio plays and poetry, translated Goethe and Aeschylus. On location for the BBC, he descended into a mineshaft, caught pneumonia, and died just before his collection, "The Burning Perch," was published.