Voices in the library

I sit alone in the morning quiet
of this repository
of the human journey
which is filled with the thoughts
of long vanished mental giants.
Their ancient voices
echoing down the years
talk to me of love and hate,
of war and peace,
of life and death.
From Shakespeare to Shaw
to Yeats to Salinger,
their opinions,
wise and otherwise,
span the philosophical
spectrum.
But to me, Plato speaks for them all:
The life which is unexamined
is not worth living.