And battle's terrible array.
I see the patient mother read,
With aching heart, of wrecks that float
Disabled on those seas remote,
Or of some great heroic deed

On battle-fields, where thousands bleed
To lift one hero into fame.

Anxious she bends her graceful head
Above these chronicles of pain,
And trembles with a secret dread
Lest there among the drowned or slain
She find the one beloved name.

VII

After a day of cloud and wind and rain Sometimes the setting sun breaks out again,

And, touching all the darksome woods with light,

Smiles on the fields, until they laugh and sing,

Then like a ruby from the horizon's ring Drops down into the night.

What see I now? The night is fair, The storm of grief, the clouds of care, The wind, the rain, have passed away;

The lamps are lit, the fires burn bright,
The house is full of life and light;
It is the Golden Wedding day.
The guests come thronging in once more,
Quick footsteps sound along the floor,
The trooping children crowd the stair,
And in and out and everywhere
Flashes along the corridor

The sunshine of their golden hair.
On the round table in the hall
Another Ariadne's Crown

Out of the sky hath fallen down;
More than one Monarch of the Moon
Is drumming with his silver spoon;
The light of love shines over all.

O fortunate, O happy day!
The people sing, the people say.
The ancient bridegroom and the bride,
Smiling contented and serene
Upon the blithe, bewildering scene,
Behold, well pleased, on every side
Their forms and features multiplied,
As the reflection of a light
Between two burnished mirrors gleams,
Or lamps upon a bridge at night
Stretch on and on before the sight,
Till the long vista endless seems.

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.
OVID, Fastorum, Lib. vi.

In October, 1874, Mr. Longfellow was urged to write a poem for the fiftieth anniversary of the graduation of his college class to be held the next summer. At first he said that he could not write the poem, so averse was he from occasional poems, but a sudden thought seems to have struck him, very likely upon seeing a representation of Gerome's famous picture, and ten days later he notes in his diary that he had finished the writing. He not only wrote the poem, but what was a rare act with him, read it before the audience gathered in the church at Brunswick on the occasion of the anniversary. He expressed his relief when he found that he could read his poem from the pulpit, and said, "Let me cover myself as much as possible; I wish it might be entirely."

"O CESAR, we who are about to die Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry

O ye familiar scenes, ―ye groves of pine, That once were mine and are no longer mine,

To-day we make the poet's words our own,
And utter them in plaintive undertone;
Nor to the living only be they said,
But to the other living called the dead,
Whose dear, paternal images appear
Not wrapped in gloom, but robed in sun-
shine here;

Whose simple lives, complete and without flaw,

Were part and parcel of great Nature's law;

Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid,
"Here is thy talent in a napkin laid,”
But labored in their sphere, as men who live
In the delight that work alone can give.
Peace be to them; eternal peace and rest,
And the fulfilment of the great behest :
"Ye have been faithful over a few things,
Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings."

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!

Ah me! the fifty years since last we met
Seem to me fifty folios bound and set
By Time, the great transcriber, on his
shelves,

Wherein are written the histories of ourselves.

What tragedies, what comedies, are there; What joy and grief, what rapture and despair!

What chronicles of triumph and defeat,
Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat!
What records of regrets, and doubts, and
fears!

What pages blotted, blistered by our tears! What lovely landscapes on the margin shine,

What sweet, angelic faces, what divine And holy images of love and trust, Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust!

And banish what we all too deeply feel
Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal.

In mediæval Rome, I know not where,
There stood an image with its arm in air,
And on its lifted finger, shining clear,
A golden ring with the device, "Strike

here!"

Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed

The meaning that these words but half expressed,

Until a learned clerk, who at noonday With downcast eyes was passing on his way, Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well,

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,

Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall, And all was dark around and overhead ; Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead!

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.

Were these mysterious words of menace

set:

"That which I am, I am; my fatal aim None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!"

Midway the hall was a fair table placed, With cloth of gold, and golden cups enchased

With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold,

And gold the bread and viands manifold.
Around it, silent, motionless, and sad,
Were seated gallant knights in armor clad,
And ladies beautiful with plume and zone,
But they were stone, their hearts within
were stone;

And the vast hall was filled in every part
With silent crowds, stony in face and heart.

Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed, The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed;

Then from the table, by his greed made bold,

He seized a goblet and a knife of gold, And suddenly from their seats the guests

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!

But why, you ask me, should this tale be told

To men grown old, or who are growing old?
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Edipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his com-
peers,

When each had numbered more than four

score years,

And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his "Characters of Men." Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,

At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past.

These are indeed exceptions; but they show How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow

Into the arctic regions of our lives, Where little else than life itself survives.

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.