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Here martyred and hereafter glorified;

And the great Rose1 upon its leaves displays
Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
And Beatrice again at Dante's side

No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.2
And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs

Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love
And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;

And the melodious bells among the spires

O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above
Proclaim the elevation of the Host!3

VI

O star of morning and of liberty!*

O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines
Above the darkness of the Apennines,
Forerunner of the day that is to be!
The voices of the city and the sea,

The voices of the mountains and the pines,
Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines
Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!
Thy flame is blown abroad from all the heights,
Through all the nations, and a sound is heard,
As of a mighty wind, and men devout,
Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes,

In their own language hear thy wondrous word,
And many are amazed and many doubt.

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,
And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,

Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;

He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
Then writeth in a book like any clerk.5

1. In the Paradiso, xxxi, Dante's pil-
grimage ends with his vision of the rosa
sempeterna, in which the Virgin and the
Trinity appear, surrounded by the saints
in a paradise shaped like the petals of

a great rose.

2. Cf. Paradiso, xxx.

3. The consecrated bread of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper (Eucharist),

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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
Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note
Of lark and linnet, and from every page
Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

Milton

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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
And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold
All its loose-flowing garments into one,
Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun
Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold.

So in majestic cadence rise and fall

The mighty undulations of thy song,
O sightless Bard, England's Mæonides!®
And ever and anon, high over all

Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,
Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.

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1875

Keats

The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
To the red rising moon, and loud and deep

The nightingale is singing from the steep;
It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold

A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,

On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name
Was writ in water." And was this the meed

6. Homer, by tradition the son of
Maeon, hence "Mæonides"; Milton, like
Homer, was blind.

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

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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:
"The smoking flax before it burst to flame

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,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.

-OVID, FASTORUM, Lib. vi2

"O Cæsar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face

With death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes,-ye groves of pine,

That once were mine and are no longer mine,—
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,-
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished,—we who are about to die,
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town.

Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear!
We are forgotten; and in your austere
And calm indifference, ye little care

Whether we come or go, or whence or where.
What passing generations fill these halls,
What passing voices echo from these walls,

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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;
They answer us-alas! what have I said?

9. "A bruised reed shall he not break,
and the smoking flax shall he not
quench" (Isaiah xlii: 3).

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

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the Latin legend, slightly different in
construction, Ave, Caesar, Imperator,
Morituri te Salutant. Longfellow read
the poem to the anniversary audience
in a Brunswick church, and published it
in The Masque of Pandora (1875).
2. "Time slips away, and we grow old
with these silent years, and the days fly
by with no curb to delay them."

What greetings come there from the voiceless dead?
What salutation, welcome, or reply?

What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie?
They are no longer here; they all are gone
Into the land of shadows,-all save one.
Honor and reverence, and the good repute
That follows faithful service as its fruit,
Be unto him, whom living we salute.

The great Italian poet, when he made
His dreadful journey to the realms of shade,
Met there the old instructor of his youth,
And cried in tones of pity and of ruth:
"Oh, never from the memory of my heart

Your dear, paternal image shall depart,

Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,
Taught me how mortals are immortalized;
How grateful am I for that patient care

All my life long my language shall declare."

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 sunshine 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."
And ye who fill the places we once filled,
And follow in the furrows that we tilled,

Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high,
We who are old, and are about to die,
Salute you; hail you; take your hands in ours,
And crown you with our welcome as with flowers!

3. Dante, in the Inferno (v, 82-87),
imagines meeting among the souls of
the dead his old advisor, Brunetto
Latini, and thanks him for his instruc-
tion in the words translated in this
stanza. Longfellow pays this compliment

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to Professor Alphaeus Spring Packard. 4. A parable of Jesus. Cf. Matthew xxv: 14-29.

5. A parable of Jesus. Cf. Luke xix: 1117.

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How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams
With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!
Book of Beginnings, Story without End,
Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!
Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse,
That holds the treasures of the universe!

All possibilities are in its hands,

No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands;
In its sublime audacity of faith,

"Be thou removed!" it to the mountain saith,"
And with ambitious feet, secure and proud,
Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud!

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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,

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Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight

To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield,
Of Trojans and Achaians in the field;

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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.1
Write on your doors the saying wise and old,
"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere, "Be bold;
Be not too bold!"2 Yet better the excess

6. In Old Fortunatus (1600), a play by
Thomas Dekker, Fortunatus receives
from the goddess of fortune an inex-
haustible purse, but dies of his conse-
quent follies.

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.

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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).

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