Here martyred and hereafter glorified; And the great Rose1 upon its leaves displays No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.2 Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love And the melodious bells among the spires O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above VI O star of morning and of liberty!* O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines The voices of the mountains and the pines, In their own language hear thy wondrous word, 1864-1867 Chaucer An old man in a lodge within a park; The chamber walls depicted all around ΤΟ ΤΟ 1865-1867 With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, 1. In the Paradiso, xxxi, Dante's pil- a great rose. 2. Cf. Paradiso, xxx. 3. The consecrated bread of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper (Eucharist), 5 held up or "elevated" at the climax of this ritual. 4. The familiar concept of Dante as morning star of a new democratic freedom, especially for Italy. 5. A scholar. Cf. Chaucer's "Clerk of Oxenford," one of the most appealing characters of the Canterbury Tales. 1873 1873 He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Milton 30 1875 I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold How the voluminous billows roll and run, Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled So in majestic cadence rise and fall The mighty undulations of thy song, Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong, 5 10 1875 Keats The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep; The nightingale is singing from the steep; A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep. On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name 6. Homer, by tradition the son of 7. Longfellow suggests the analogy of the tragically brief life of John Keats with the theme of the Romantic poet's most ambitious poem, Endymion (1818). The youth, in search of eternal 5 ΙΟ beauty personified in a visionary goddess, discovers her to be the goddess of the moon, who rewards his love with immortality and eternal sleep. 8. Keats composed this as his own epitaph (writing "lies," not "lieth"), and directed that it be inscribed on his tombstone. 1873 Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write: Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed." Morituri Salutamus1 1875 POEM FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CLASS OF 1825 IN BOWDOIN COLLEGE Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis, -OVID, FASTORUM, Lib. vi2 "O Cæsar, we who are about to die With death and with the Roman populace. O ye familiar scenes,-ye groves of pine, That once were mine and are no longer mine,— Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear! Whether we come or go, or whence or where. Ye heed not; we are only as the blast, A moment heard, and then forever past. Not so the teachers who in earlier days Led our bewildered feet through learning's maze; 9. "A bruised reed shall he not break, 1. This title, translated in the first two lines of the poem, refers to the traditional salutation of the gladiator to the Roman emperor on entering the arena. Longfellow apparently derived the general idea of the poem from a picture of gladiators painted by Gérôme, bearing 25 the Latin legend, slightly different in What greetings come there from the voiceless dead? What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie? The great Italian poet, when he made Your dear, paternal image shall depart, Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised, All my life long my language shall declare." To-day we make the poet's words our own, But to the other living called the dead, Whose dear, paternal images appear Not wrapped in gloom, but robed in sunshine here; Whose simple lives, complete and without flaw, Were part and parcel of great Nature's law; Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high, 3. Dante, in the Inferno (v, 82-87), 50 55 60 65 to Professor Alphaeus Spring Packard. 4. A parable of Jesus. Cf. Matthew xxv: 14-29. 5. A parable of Jesus. Cf. Luke xix: 1117. How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams All possibilities are in its hands, No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands; "Be thou removed!" it to the mountain saith," 70 75 As ancient Priams at the Scæan gate Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state With the old men, too old and weak to fight, 80 Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield, 85 So from the snowy summits of our years We see you in the plain, as each appears, Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus?" Let him not boast who puts his armor on 6. In Old Fortunatus (1600), a play by 7. Cf. I Corinthians. xiii: 2. 8. King of Troy. Cf. Iliad, Book III, 1. 174, for the beginning of the episode described below. 9. Cf. I Kings xx: 11. 1. Marsyas, a satyr, discovered that the flute, of its own accord, emitted ravishing music; hence he challenged Apollo, god of music, to a contest. The gods decided in favor of Apollo, and Marsyas was flayed alive as a presumptuous cheat. 2. The inscription over the door of the last room in the castle of love (Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book III, Canto xi, stanza 54). |