The Solace of Books

What matter though my room be small,
      Though this red lamplight looks
On nothing but a papered wall
      And some few rows of books?

For in my hand I hold a key
      that opens golden doors;
At whose resistless sesame
      A tide of sunlight pours,

In from the basking lawn that lie
      Beyond the bound'ry wall;
Where summer broods eternally,
      Where the cicalas call.

There all the landscape softer is,
      There greener tendrils twine,
The bowers are roofed with clematis,
      With briany and vine.

There pears and golden apples hang,
      There falls the honey-dew,
And there the birds that monrning sang,
      When all the world was new.

Beneath the oaks Menalcas woos
      Arachnia's nut-brown eyes;
And still the laughing faun pursues,
      And still the wood-nymph flies.

And you may hear young Orpheus there
      Come singing through the wood,
Or catch the gleam of golden hair
      In Dian's solitude.

So when the world is all awry,
      When life is out of chime,
I take this key of gold and fly
      To that serener clime;

To thos fair sunlit lawns that lie
      Beyond the bound'ry wall,
Where summer broods eternally
      And youth is over all.

This poem, The Solace of Books, kicks off Howard S. Ruddy's, Book Lovers Verse and is attributed to The Spectator. So who, or what, was the Spectator?

I found this book recently and was very happy to discover between the covers a book lover's wide range of verse from both American and European writers from the past to present-day 1899. The compiler of this volume, Howard S. Ruddy, was the literary editor at the Rochester Herald.