How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams

With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!
Book of Beginnings, Story without End,
Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!
Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse,
That holds the treasures of the universe!
All possibilities are in its hands,
No danger daunts it, and no foe with-
stands;

In its sublime audacity of faith,
"Be thou removed!" it to the mountain
saith,

And with ambitious feet, secure and proud, Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud!

As ancient Priam at the Scæan gate
Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state
With the old men, too old and weak to
fight,

Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight

To see the embattled hosts, with spear and

shield,

Of Trojans and Achaians in the field;
So from the snowy summits of our years
We see you in the plain, as each appears,
And question of you; asking, "Who is he
That towers above the others? Which may
be

Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus,
Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus ?"

Let him not boast who puts his armor on
As he who puts it off, the battle done.
Study yourselves; and most of all note
well

Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel.
Not every blossom ripens into fruit;
Minerva, the inventress of the flute,
Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed
Distorted in a fountain as she played;
The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his

fate

Was one to make the bravest hesitate.

Write on your doors the saying wise and old,

'Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere, "Be bold;

Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less;

Better like Hector in the field to die,
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly.

And now, my classmates; ye remaining few
That number not the half of those we knew,
Ye, against whose familiar names not yet
The fatal asterisk of death is set,
Ye I salute! The horologe of Time
Strikes the half-century with a solemn
chime,

And summons us together once again,
The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain.

Where are the others? Voices from the deep

Caverns of darkness answer me: "They sleep!"

I name no names; instinctively I feel Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel,

And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss,

For every heart best knoweth its own loss. I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white

Through the pale dusk of the impending night;

O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws Its golden lilies mingled with the rose; We give to each a tender thought, and pass Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass,

Unto these scenes frequented by our feet When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet.

What shall I say to you? What can I say Better than silence is? When I survey This throng of faces turned to meet my

own,

Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown, Transformed the very landscape seems to

be;

It is the same, yet not the same to me.
So many memories crowd upon my brain,
So many ghosts are in the wooded plain,
I fain would steal away, with noiseless
tread,

As from a house where some one lieth dead.
I cannot go ;- I pause ; · I hesitate;
My feet reluctant linger at the gate;
As one who struggles in a troubled dream
To speak and cannot, to myself I seem.

Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears!
Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years!
Whatever time or space may intervene,
I will not be a stranger in this scene.
Here every doubt, all indecision, ends;
Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates,
friends!

Whereon the shadow of the finger fell; And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found

A secret stairway leading underground.
Down this he passed into a spacious hall,
Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall;
And opposite, in threatening attitude,

The writer of this legend then records
Its ghostly application in these words:
The image is the Adversary old,
Whose beckoning finger points to realms of
gold;

Our lusts and passions are the downward stair

That leads the soul from a diviner air;
The archer, Death; the flaming jewel,
Life;

Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone

By avarice have been hardened into stone; The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf Tempts from his books and from his nobler self.

strife,

The discord in the harmonies of life!
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books;
The market-place, the eager love of gain,
Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

As the barometer foretells the storm
While still the skies are clear, the weather

warm,

So something in us, as old age draws near,
Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere.
The nimble mercury, ere we are aware,
Descends the elastic ladder of the air;
The telltale blood in artery and vein
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain ;
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent moon;
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon;
It is not strength, but weakness; not de-
sire,

But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,

The burning and consuming element,
But that of ashes and of embers spent,

In which some living sparks we still discern, Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.

What then? Shall we sit idly down and

say

The night hath come; it is no longer day? The night hath not yet come; we are not quite

Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not Edipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn,
But other something, would we but begin;
For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when com

mon men

Are busy with their trivial affairs, Having and holding? Why, when thou hadst read

Nature's mysterious manuscript, and then Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears, Why art thou silent? Why shouldst thou be dead?

IV

River, that stealest with such silent pace Around the City of the Dead, where lies A friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyes

Shall see no more in his accustomed place,

Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace, And say good night, for now the western skies

Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise Like damps that gather on a dead man's face.

Good night! good night! as we so oft have said

Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days That are no more, and shall no more

return.

bed;

With human life in endless overflow; Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets

that blow

To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats, Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;

Tolling of bells in turrets, and below Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw

O'er garden-walls their intermingled
sweets!

This vision comes to me when I unfold
The volume of the Poet paramount,
Whom all the Muses loved, not one

alone ;

Into his hands they put the lyre of gold, And, crowned with sacred laurel at their

fount,

Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.

MILTON

I PACE the sounding sea-beach and behold How the voluminous billows roll and run,