University of Virginia Library


29

HARVARD STUDENT'S SONG.

Remember ye the fateful gun that sounded
To Sumter's walls from Charleston's treacherous shore?
Remember ye how hearts indignant bounded
When our first dead came back from Baltimore?
The banner fell that every breeze had flattered,
The hum of thrift was hushed with sudden woe;
We raised anew the emblems shamed and shattered,
And turned a front resolved to meet the foe.
Remember ye how, out of boyhood leaping,
Our gallant mates stood ready for the fray,
As new-fledged eaglets rise, with sudden sweeping,
And meet unscared the dazzling front of day?
Our classic toil became inglorious leisure,
We praised the calm Horatian ode no more,
But answered back with song the martial measure,
That held its throb above the cannon's roar.

30

Remember ye the pageants dim and solemn,
Where Love and Grief have borne the funeral pall?
The joyless marching of the mustered column,
With arms reversed, to Him who conquers all?
Oh! give them back, thou bloody breast of Treason,
They were our own, the darlings of our hearts:
They come benumbed and frosted out of season,
With whom the summer of our youth departs.
Look back no more! our time has come, my brothers!
In Fate's high roll our names are written too:
We fill the mournful gaps left bare by others,
The ranks where Fear has never broken through.
Look, ancient Walls, upon our stern election!
Keep, Echoes dear, remembrance of our breath!
And gentle eyes, and hearts of pure affection,
Light us resolved to victory or death!