Along the trail :: :: University of Virginia Library

Along the trail

a book of lyrics by Richard Hovey

Hovey, Richard (1864-1900)

III

A WINTER THOUGHT OF DARTMOUTH IN MANHATTAN

OUR LIEGE LADY, DARTMOUTH

HANOVER WINTER-SONG

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III

COMRADES

[_]

(Read at the Sixtieth Annual Convention of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H., May 18, 1893)

Again among the hills!
The shaggy hills!
The clear arousing air comes like a call
Of bugle notes across the pines, and thrills
My heart as if a hero had just spoken.
Again among the hills!
The jubilant unbroken
Long dreaming of the hills!
Far off, Ascutney smiles as one at peace;
And over all
The golden sunlight pours and fills
The hollow of the earth, like a God's joy.
Again among the hills!
The tranquil hills
That took me as a boy
And filled my spirit with the silences!

O indolent, far-reaching hills, that lie
Secure in your own strength, and take your ease
Like careless giants 'neath the summer sky—
What is it to you, O hills,
That anxious men should take thought for the morrow?
What has your might to do with thought or sorrow
Or cark and cumber of conflicting wills?

Lone Pine, that thron'st thyself upon the height,
Aloof and kingly, overlooking all,
Yet uncompanioned, with the Day and Night
For pageant and the winds for festival!
I was thy minion once, and now renew
Mine ancient fealty—
To that which shaped me still remaining true,
And through allegiance only growing free.

So with no foreign nor oblivious heart,
Dartmouth, I seek once more thy granite seat;
Nor only of thy hills I feel me part,
But each encounter of the village street,
The ball-players on the campus, and their shouting,
The runners lithe and fleet,
The noisy groups of idlers, and the songs,
The laughter and the flouting—
Spectacled comic unrelated beings
With book in hand,
Who 'mid all stir of life, all whirl of rhythms,
All strivings, lovings, kissings, dreamings, seeings,
Still live apart in some strange land
Of aorists and ohms and logarithms—
All these are mine; I greet them with a shout.
Whether they will or no, they greet me too.
Grave teachers and the students' jocund rout,
Class-room and tennis court, alike they knew
My step once, and they cannot shut me out.

But dearer than the silence of the hills,
And greater than the wisdom of the years,
Is man to man, indifferent of ills,
Triumphant over fears,
To meet the world with loyal hearts that need
No witness of their friendship but the deed.
Such comrades they, the gallant Musketeers,
Wrought by the master-workman of Romance,
Who foiled the crafty Cardinal and saved
A Queen, for episode,—who braved
The utmost malice of mischance,
The utmost enmity of human foes,
But still rode on across the fields of France,
Reckless of knocks and blows,
Careless of sins or woes,
Incurious of each other's hearts, but sure
That each for each would vanquish or endure.

Praise be to you, O hills, that you can breathe
Into our souls the secret of your power!
He is no child of yours, he never knew
Your spirit—were he born beneath
Your highest crags—who bears not every hour
The might, the calm of you
About him, that sublime
Unconsciousness of all things great,—
Built on himself to stand the shocks of Time
And scarred not shaken by the bolts of Fate.

And praise to thee, my college, that the lore
Of ages may be pondered at thy feet!
That for thy sons each sage and seer of yore
His runes may still repeat!
Praise that thou givest to us understanding
To wring from the world's heart
New answers to new doubts—to make the landing
On shores that have no chart!
Praise for the glory of knowing,
And greater glory of the power to know!
Praise for the faith that doubts would overthrow,
And which through doubts to larger faith is growing!
The sons of science are a wrangling throng,
Yet through their labor what the sons of song
Have wrought in clay, at last
In the bronze is cast,
And wind and rain no more can work it wrong.

But more than strength and more than truth
Oh praise the love of man and man!
Praise it for pledge of our eternal youth!
Praise it for pulse of that great gush that ran
Through all the worlds, when He
Who made them clapped his hands for glee,
And laughed Love down the cycles of the stars.
Praise all that plants it in the hearts of men,
All that protects it from the hoof that mars,

The weed that stifles; praise the rain
That rains upon it and the sun that shines,
Till it stretch skyward with its laden vines!

Praise, then, for thee, Psi Upsilon!
And never shame if it be said
Thou carest little for the head,
All for the heart; for this is thy desire.
Not for the social grace thou mayst impart,
Not for the love of letters or of art,
Albeit thou lovest them, burns thy sacred fire.
Not to add one more whip to those that drive
Men onward in the struggle to survive,
Not to spur weary brain and tired eyes on
To toil for prizes, not, Psi Upsilon,
To be an annex to collegiate chairs
Or make their lapses good!
Make thou no claim of use
For poor excuse
Why thou shouldst climb thy holier stairs
Toward ends by plodders dimly understood.
No, for the love of comrades only, thou!
The college is the head and thou the heart.
Keep thou thy nobler part,
And wear the Bacchic ivy on thy brow.

Comrades, pour the wine to-night,
For the parting is with dawn.

Oh, the clink of cups together,
With the daylight coming on!
Greet the morn
With a double horn,
When strong men drink together!

Comrades, gird your swords to-night,
For the battle is with dawn.
Oh, the clash of shields together,
With the triumph coming on!
Greet the foe
And lay him low,
When strong men fight together.

Comrades, watch the tides to-night,
For the sailing is with dawn.
Oh, to face the spray together,
With the tempest coming on!
Greet the Sea
With a shout of glee,
When strong men roam together.

Comrades, give a cheer to-night,
For the dying is with dawn.
Oh, to meet the stars together,
With the silence coming on!
Greet the end
As a friend a friend,
When strong men die together.

—Hark, afar
The rising of the wind among the pines,
The runic wind, full of old legendries!
It talks to the ancient trees
Of sights and signs
And strange earth-creatures strong to make or mar,—
Such tales as when the firelight flickered out
In the old days men heard and had no doubt.
O wind, what is your spell?
Borne on your cry, the ages slip away,
And lo, I too am of that elder day;
I crouch by the logs and hear
With credent ear
And simple marvel the far tales men tell.

There came three women to a youth, and one
Was brown and old, and like the bark of trees
Her wrinkled skin was rough to look upon;
And one was tall and stately, and her brow
Broad with large thought and many masteries,
Yet bent a little as who saith “I trow;”
The third was like a breath of morning blown
Across the hills in May, so blithe, so fair,
With brave blue eyes, and on her yellow hair
A glory by the yellow sunlight thrown.

And the youth's heart flamed as a crackling fire,
For his eyes were full of his heart's desire.

And the old crone said to him, “Come,
For I will give thee Power.”
And the tall dame said to him, “Come,
I will give thee Wisdom and Craft.”
And the maid of the morning said to him, “Come
And I will give thee Love.”

And the youth was still as a burnt-out fire,
For he knew not which was his heart's desire.

Then spake the maid again;
“Oh, folly of men!
What thing is this whereat he starts and muses?
Not twice the Dames of Birth
Bring gifts for mirth.
Choose, if thou wilt; but he that chooses, loses.”

... Night on the hills!
And the ancient stars emerge.
The silence of their mighty distances
Compels the world to peace. Now sinks the surge
Of life to a soft stir of mountain rills,
And over the swarm and urge
Of eager men sleep falls and darkling ease.

Night on the hills!
Dark mother-Night, draw near;
Lay hands on us and whisper words of cheer
So softly, oh, so softly! Now may we

Be each as one that leaves his midnight task
And throws his casement open; and the air
Comes up across the lowlands from the Sea
And cools his temples, as a maid might ask
With shy caress what speech would never dare;
And he leans back to her demure desires,
And as a dream sees far below
The city with its lights aglow
And blesses in his heart his brothers there;
Then toward the eternal stars again aspires.

1893

ONE LEAF MORE

[_]

(Read at the Dinner given by the Psi Upsilon Association of Washington, February 7, 1893, to Joseph R. Hawley, on the occasion of his re-election to the United States Senate)

Sir, I would do you honor in some way
If my poor hand could lay a laurel more
On brows already thick with martial bay
And ivy evergreen, the scholar's store,
And civic oak new-garlanded to-day
To bind afresh where oft were bound before
Its fronds forensic and are bound for aye.

But you need not a poet's voice to tell
The people who have honored you so long

Why they should love you whom they know so well.
Still less does any here require my song
That he should praise you whom our hearts impel
To hail with homage, heartfelt, deep, and strong,
To which my speech is but a tinkling bell.

Still let me praise you, though more fame accrue
To me than you by praising. Praise is more
For him that gives than him to whom 't is due.
He that receives it has a bounteous store
And needs it not. Who gives, grows just and true
By speaking justly. You are as before,
But we are better that we honor you.

1893

SPRING

[_]

(Read at the Sixty-third Annual Convention of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., May 7, 1896)

I said in my heart, “I am sick of four walls and a ceiling.
I have need of the sky.
I have business with the grass.
I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling,
Lone and high,
And the slow clouds go by.
I will get me away to the waters that glass
The clouds as they pass,

To the waters that lie
Like the heart of a maiden aware of a doom drawing nigh
And dumb for sorcery of impending joy.
I will get me away to the woods.
Spring, like a huntsman's boy,
Halloos along the hillsides and unhoods
The falcon in my will.
The dogwood calls me, and the sudden thrill
That breaks in apple blooms down country roads
Plucks me by the sleeve and nudges me away.
The sap is in the boles to-day,
And in my veins a pulse that yearns and goads.”

When I got to the woods, I found out
What the Spring was about,
With her gypsy ways
And her heart ablaze,
Coming up from the south
With the wander-lure of witch songs in her mouth.
For the sky
Stirred and grew soft and swimming as a lover's eye
As she went by;
The air
Made love to all it touched, as if its care
Were all to spare;
The earth
Prickled with lust of birth;

The woodland streams
Babbled the incoherence of the thousand dreams
Wherewith the warm sun teems.
And out of the frieze
Of the chestnut trees
I heard
The sky and the fields and the thicket find voice in a bird.
The goldenwing—hark!
How he drives his song
Like a golden nail
Through the hush of the air!
I thrill to his cry in the leafage there;
I respond to the new life mounting under the bark.
I shall not be long
To follow
With eft and bulrush, bee and bud and swallow,
On the old trail.

Spring in the world!
And all things are made new!
There was never a mote that whirled
In the nebular morn,
There was never a brook that purled
When the hills were born,
There was never a leaf uncurled—
Not the first that grew—
Nor a bee-flight hurled,

Nor a bird-note skirled,
Nor a cloud-wisp swirled
In the depth of the blue,
More alive and afresh and impromptu, more thoughtless and certain and free,
More a shout with the glee
Of the Unknown new-burst on the wonder, than here, than here,
In the re-wrought sphere
Of the new-born year—
Now, now,
When the greenlet sings on the red-bud bough
Where the blossoms are whispering “I and thou,”—
“I and thou,”
And a lass at the turn looks after her lad with a dawn on her brow,
And the world is just made—now!

Spring in the heart!
With her pinks and pearls and yellows!
Spring, fellows,
And we too feel the little green leaves a-start
Across the bare-twigged winter of the mart.
The campus is reborn in us to-day;
The old grip stirs our hearts with new-old joy;
Again bursts bonds for madcap holiday
The eternal boy.

For we have not come here for long debate
Nor taking counsel for our household order,
Howe'er we make a feint of serious things,—
For all the world as in affairs of state
A word goes out for war along the border
To further or defeat the loves of kings.
We put our house to rights from year to year,
But that is not the call that brings us here;
We have come here to be glad.

Give a rouse, then, in the Maytime
For a life that knows no fear!
Turn night-time into daytime
With the sunlight of good cheer!
For it's always fair weather
When good fellows get together
With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear.

When the wind comes up from Cuba
And the birds are on the wing,
And our hearts are patting juba
To the banjo of the spring,
Then there 's no wonder whether
The boys will get together,
With a stein on the table and a cheer for everything.

For we 're all frank-and-twenty
When the spring is in the air,

And we 've faith and hope a-plenty,
And we 've life and love to spare;
And it 's birds of a feather
When we all get together,
With a stein on the table and a heart without a care.

For we know the world is glorious
And the goal a golden thing,
And that God is not censorious
When his children have their fling;
And life slips its tether
When the boys get together,
With a stein on the table in the fellowship of spring.

A road runs east and a road runs west
From the table where we sing;
And the lure of the one is a roving quest,
And the lure of the other a lotus dream.
And the eastward road leads into the West
Of the lifelong chase of the vanishing gleam;
And the westward road leads into the East,
Where the spirit from striving is released,
Where the soul like a child in God's arms lies
And forgets the lure of the butterflies.
And west is east, if you follow the trail to the end;
And east is west, if you follow the trail to the end;
And the East and the West in the spring of the world shall blend
As a man and a woman that plight

Their troth in the warm spring night.
And the spring for the East is the sap in the heart of a tree;
And the spring for the West is the will in the wings of a bird;
But the spring for the East and the West alike shall be
An urge in their bones and an ache in their spirit, a word
That shall knit them in one for Time's foison, once they have heard.

And do I not hear
The first low stirring of that greater spring
Thrill in the underworld of the cosmic year?
The wafture of scant violets presaging
The roses and the tasselled corn to be;
A yearning in the roots of grass and tree;
A swallow in the eaves;
The hint of coming leaves;
The signals of the summer coming up from Arcadie!

For surely in the blind deep-buried roots
Of all men's souls to-day
A secret quiver shoots.
An underground compulsion of new birth
Lays hold upon the dark core of our being,
And unborn blossoms urge their uncomprehended way
Toward the outer day.
Unconscious, dumb, unseeing,

The darkness in us is aware
Of something potent burning through the earth,
Of something vital in the procreant air.

Is it a spring, indeed?
Or do we stir and mutter in our dreams,
Only to sleep again?
What warrant have we that we give not heed
To the caprices of an idle brain
That in its slumber deems
The world of slumber real as it seems?
No,—
Spring 's not to be mistaken.
When her first far flute notes blow
Across the snow,
Bird, beast, and blossom know
That she is there.
The very bats awaken
That hang in clusters in Kentucky caves
All winter, breathless, motionless, asleep,
And feel no alteration of the air,
For all year long those vasty caverns keep,
Winter and summer, even temperature;
And yet when April whistles on the hill,
Somehow, far in those subterranean naves,
They know, they hear her, they obey her will,
And wake and circle through the vaulted aisles
To find her in the open where she smiles.

So we are somehow sure,
By this dumb turmoil in the soul of man,
Of an impending something. When the stress
Climbs to fruition, we can only guess
What many-seeded harvest we shall scan;
But from one impulse, like a northering sun,
The innumerable outburst is begun,
And in that common sunlight all men know
A common ecstasy
And feel themselves at one.
The comradeship of joy and mystery
Thrills us more vitally as we arouse,
And we shall find our new day intimate
Beyond the guess of any long ago.
Doubting or elate,
With agony or triumph on our brows,
We shall not fail to be
Better comrades than before;
For no new sense puts forth in us but we
Enter our fellows' lives thereby the more.

And three great spirits with the spirit of man
Go forth to do his bidding. One is free,
And one is shackled, and the third, unbound,
Halts yet a little with a broken chain
Of antique workmanship, not wholly loosed,
That dangles and impedes his forthright way.
Unfettered, swift, hawk-eyed, implacable,

The wonder-worker, Science, with his wand,
Subdues an alien world to man's desires.
And Art with wide imaginative wings
Stands by, alert for flight, to bear his lord
Into the strange heart of that alien world
Till he shall live in it as in himself
And know its longing as he knows his own.
Behind a little, where the shadows fall,
Lingers Religion with deep-brooding eyes,
Serene, impenetrable, transpicuous
As the all-clear and all-mysterious sky,
Biding her time to fuse into one act
Those other twain, man's right hand and his left.

For all the bonds shall be broken and rent in sunder,
And the soul of man go free
Forth with those three
Into the lands of wonder;
Like some undaunted youth,
Afield in quest of truth,
Rejoicing in the road he journeys on
As much as in the hope of journey done.
And the road runs east, and the road runs west,
That his vagrant feet explore;
And he knows no haste and he knows no rest,
And every mile has a stranger zest
Than the miles he trod before;
And his heart leaps high in the nascent year

When he sees the purple buds appear;
For he knows, though the great black frost may blight
The hope of May in a single night,
That the spring, though it shrink back under the bark,
But bides its time somewhere in the dark—
Though it come not now to its blossoming,
By the thrill in his heart he knows the spring;
And the promise it makes perchance too soon,
It shall keep with its roses yet in June;
For the ages fret not over a day,
And the greater to-morrow is on its way.

1896

MEN OF DARTMOUTH

Men of Dartmouth, give a rouse
For the college on the hill!
For the Lone Pine above her
And the loyal men who love her,—
Give a rouse, give a rouse, with a will!
For the sons of old Dartmouth,
The sturdy sons of Dartmouth—
Though round the girdled earth they roam,
Her spell on them remains;
They have the still North in their hearts,
The hill-winds in their veins,
And the granite of New Hampshire
In their muscles and their brains.

They were mighty men of old
That she nurtured at her side,
Till like Vikings they went forth
From the lone and silent North,—
And they strove, and they wrought, and they died.
But—the sons of old Dartmouth,
The laurelled sons of Dartmouth—
The mother keeps them in her heart
And guards their altar-flame;
The still North remembers them,
The hill-winds know their name,
And the granite of New Hampshire
Keeps the record of their fame.

Men of Dartmouth, set a watch
Lest the old traditions fail!
Stand as brother stands by brother!
Dare a deed for the old Mother!
Greet the world, from the hills, with a hail!
For the sons of old Dartmouth,
The loyal sons of Dartmouth—
Around the world they keep for her
Their old chivalric faith;
They have the still North in their souls,
The hill-winds in their breath;
And the granite of New Hampshire
Is made part of them till death.

1894

THE OLD PINE

(Dartmouth College.)

It stood upon the hill like some old chief,
And held communion with the cryptic wind,
Keeping like some dim, unforgotten grief,
The memory of tribesmen autumn-skinned,
Silent and slow as clouds, whose footing passed
Down the remote trails of oblivion
Long since into the shadows of the Past.
Alone, aloof, strong fellow of the sun,
We chose it for our standard in its prime;
Nor, though no longer grimly from its hill
It fronts the world like Webster, wind nor time
Have felled its austere ghost. We see it still,
In alien lands, resurgent and undying,
Flag of our hearts, from sudden ramparts flying.

1895

IN MEMORIAM

(A. H. Quint)

Mourn we who honored him but knew him not;
Grieve ye who loved him, looking on his face;
Be mindful, Dartmouth, of each strenuous trace
That keeps his loyal record unforgot.

There is no faithlessness in grief, God wot;
However high the hope or clear the gaze,
There must be tears at every burial-place,
Though through the tears the very sky be shot.
For death is like the passing of a star
That melts into the splendor of the dawn.
Were we beyond this air that blurs our sight
In the clear ether where the angels are,
We should behold it still; but now, withdrawn
In sunrise, lose it, looking on the light.

1896

DARTMOUTH ODE

I

Out of the hills came a voice to me,
Out of the pine woods a cry:

“Thou hast numbered and named us, O man. Hast thou known us at all?
Thou hast riven our rocks for their secrets, and measured our heights
As a hillock is measured. But are we revealed? Canst thou call
Ascutney thy fellow? Or is it thou Kearsarge invites?

What speech have we given thee, measurer—cleaver of stones?
For we talk to the day-star at dawning, the night-winds o' nights,
And our days are a tongue that thou hearest not, digger of bones!

“O you who would know us, come out from the roofs you have made,
And plunge in our waters and breathe the sharp joy of the air!
Let the hot sun beat down on your foreheads, lie prone in the shade,
With your hearts to the roots and the mosses, climb till you stare
From the summit that juts like an island up into the sky!
Watch the clouds pass by day, and by night let the power of Altair
And Arcturus and Vega be on you to lift you on high!

“For our heart is not down on the maps, nor our magic in books;
But the lover that seeks us shall find us, and keep in his heart
Every rune of our slow-heaving hillsides, the spaces and nooks
Of our woodlands, the sleep of our waters. His thoughts shall be part

Of our thoughts, and his ways shall be with us. His spirit shall flee
From the gluttons of fact. He shall dwell, as the hills dwell, apart.
He only that loves us and lives with us, knows what we be.”

I hear you, O woods and hills!
I hearken, O wind of the North!

II

Daughter of the woods and hills, Dartmouth, my stern
Rock-boned and wind-brown sibyl of the snows!
First in thy praise whom we can never praise
Enough, I lay my laurel in my turn
Before thee in thy uplands. No one goes
Forth from thy granite through the summer days,
And many a land of apple and of rose,
Keeping in his heart more faithfully than I
The love of thy grim hills and northern sky.

Mother of Webster! Mother of men! Being great,
Be greater; let the honor of thy past,
For which we sit in festival, elate,
Be but the portent of thy larger fate,
The adumbration of a deed more vast.
With eyes upon the future, thou and we

Shall better celebrate the past we praise,
And in the pledge of unaccomplished days
Find a new joy thrill through our pride in thee.

III

O Dartmouth, nurse of men, I see your games
To make men strong, your books to make them wise;
But there is other sight than that of eyes,
And other strength than that which strikes and maims.
What hast thou done to purge the passions pure,
To wake the myriad instincts that lie sleeping
Within us unaroused and undivined,
As forests in a hazel-nut endure;
To fashion finelier our joy and weeping,
Inspire us intuitions swift and sure,
And give us soul as manifold as mind;
To make us scholars in the lore of feeling,
And turn the world to beauty and revealing?

O justly proud of thy first strenuous years!
Be not content that thou hast nurtured well
The hardy prowess of thy pioneers.
Among thy fellows bold, be thou the first,
Still guarding sacredly the antique well,
To seek new springs to quench the ages' thirst.
Take up the axe, O woodman of the soul,
And break new paths through tangled ignorance;
Dare the unknown, till on thy jubilant glance

The prairies of the spirit shall unroll.
For thou mayest teach us all that thou hast taught,
Nor slay the earlier instinct of the Faun,
Whose intimacy with earth and air withdrawn,
There rests but hearsay knowledge in our thought.
And thou mayest make us the familiars of
The woodlands of desire, the crags of fate,
The lakes of worship and the dells of love,
Even as the Faun is Nature's intimate.
For God lacks not his seers, and Art is strong,
And spirit unto spirit utters speech,
Nor is there any heaven beyond the reach
Of them that know the masteries of Song.

IV

Oh, the mind and its kingdoms are goodly, and well for the brain
That has craft to discover and cunning to bind to its will
And wisdom to weigh at its worth all the wealth they contain.
But the heart has its empire as well, and he shall fare ill
Who has learned not the way to its meadows. His knowledge shall be
A bitter taste in his heart; he shall spit at his skill;
And the days of his life shall be sterile and salt as the sea.

Ay, save the man's love be made greater, even knowledge shall wane,
And burn to the mere dry shrivelled mummy of thought,
As the sweet grass withers and dies if it get not the rain.
But we—oh, what have we done that the heart should be taught?
We have given men brawn—without love 't is the Brute come again;
We have given men brain—without love 't is the Fiend. Is there aught
We have given to greaten the soul, we who dare to shape men?

Oh, train we the body for beauty, and train we the soul
Not only as mind but as man, not to know but to be!
Give us masters to fashion our hearts! Let the fool be a mole
And burrow his life out; the wise man shall be as a tree
That sends down his roots to the mole-world, but laughs in the air
With his flowers, and his branches shall stretch to the sun to get free;
And the shepherds and husbandmen feed of the fruit he shall bear.

125th anniversary of the college, 1894

A WINTER THOUGHT OF DARTMOUTH IN MANHATTAN

Old Mother!
Mother off in the hills, by the banks of the beautiful river!
—River lacquered with pale green luminous ice
Now, and the shouldered ridges ermined with flushed white snow—
Our thoughts go back to thee, Mother,
Straggle up the Connecticut, and by Bellows Falls and the Junction,
Find thee at last on thy hills, and embrace thy knees, old Mother.

We do not follow our thoughts upon that journey;
We have left thee, as men leave mothers,
Choosing and wedding their wives and cleaving thenceforth to them only.

Ah, she is stronger than thou, she who now holds us;
She that sits by the sea, new-crowned with a five-fold tiara;
She of the great twin harbors, our lady of rivers and islands;
Tower-topped Manhattan,
With feet reeded round with the masts of the five great oceans

Flowering the flags of all nations, flaunting and furling,—
City of ironways, city of ferries,
Sea-Queen and Earth-Queen!

Look, how the line of her roofs coming down from the north
Breaks into surf-leap of granite—jagged sierras—
Upheaval volcanic, lined sharp on the violet sky
Where the red moon, lop-sided, past the full,
Over their ridge swims in the tide of space,
And the harbor waves laugh softly, silently.

Look, how the overhead train at the Morningside curve
Loops like a sea-born dragon its sinuous flight,
Loops in the night in and out, high up in the air,
Like a serpent of stars with the coil and undulant reach of waves.

From under the Bridge at noon
See from the yonder shore how the great curves rise and converge,
Like the beams of the universe, like the masonry of the sky,
Like the arches set for the corners of the world,
The foundation-stone of the orbic spheres and spaces.

Is she not fair and terrible, O Mother—
City of Titan thews, deep-breasted, colossal-limbed,
Splendid with the spoil of nations, myriad-mooded Manhattan?
Behold, we are hers—she has claimed us; and who has power to withstand her?

Nevertheless, old Mother, we do not forget thee.
Thine is the past!
Thine are the old recollections, the love of the boyhood still in us,
As the sprout still lives in the bough and remembers March in the summer.
Sword and ploughshare and engine forget not the days
When the crude ore went to the smelting and the hammers rang on thy anvils.

This is a letter we send from ocean-dominioned Manhattan,
Bearing the love of a boy from the heart of a man,
Bearing the never-evading remembrance of thee and the hills and the river,
Thornton and Wentworth and Reed and the century-hollowed stairways of Dartmouth,
The old rooms where we laughed and strove and sang,
Where others now—hark, do I hear them?—
Sing in the winter night, while Orion rises and glistens.

For the Dartmouth Dinner, New York, 1898.

OUR LIEGE LADY, DARTMOUTH

Up with the green! Comrades, our Queen
Over the hill-tops comes to convene
Liege men all to her muster.
Easy her chain! Blithe be her reign,
Queened in our heart's love, never a stain
Dimming her 'scutcheon's lustre!
Up with the green! God save our Queen!
Throned on the hills of her highland demense,
Royal and beautiful, wise and serene,
Our Liege Lady, Dartmouth!

Gallant and leal! Truer than steel!
Loyally gather about her and kneel
Here at her flag's unfurling.
Welcome her near cheer upon cheer,
Shout till the hawk far above us may hear,
Where the clouds in the sky are curling.
Starry her fame, Heaven-born dame!
Cannon and trumpet salute her high name!
Hear the ranks ring with the royal acclaim:
Our Liege Lady, Dartmouth

Laurel and vine, what shall we twine
Meet for her brow who sits under the pine
Far from the mad town's jarring?
Gracious and fair, see in her hair

Jewels her noblest have brought her to wear,
Won in the world's stern warring!
Stainless her throne! Royal and lone!
Born in the purple the sunsets have thrown
Over the mountains by God's grace her own,
Our Liege Lady, Dartmouth!

Hail to the Queen! Look, where the green
Folds of her banners about her are seen,
Flash of her knight's cuirasses!
True-hearted throng, break into song!
Rally her cavaliers, faithful and strong!
Shout as her ensign passes:
Up with the green! God save our Queen!
Throned on the hills of her highland demesne,
Royal and beautiful, wise and serene,
Our Liege Lady, Dartmouth!

1891

HANOVER WINTER-SONG

Ho, a song by the fire!
(Pass the pipes, fill the bowl!)
Ho, a song by the fire!
—With a skoal! ...
For the wolf wind is whining in the doorways,
And the snow drifts deep along the road,
And the ice-gnomes are marching from their Norways,

And the great white cold walks abroad.
(Boo-oo-o! pass the bowl!)
For here by the fire
We defy frost and storm.
Ha, ha! we are warm
And we have our hearts' desire;
For here 's four good fellows
And the beechwood and the bellows,
And the cup is at the lip
In the pledge of fellowship.
Skoal

For “Dartmouth Songs,” 1898.