Along the trail :: :: University of Virginia Library

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Whose intimacy with earth and air withdrawn,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.