A Williams Anthology | Page 5

of Hope shall rise,?And usher in an ever during day.
Quarterly, 1854.
[Footnote 1: Died 1881.]
IN THE FOREST
ANON.
We lie beneath the forest shade?Whose sunny tremors dapple us;?She is a proud-eyed Grecian maid?And I am Sardanapalus;?A king uncrowned whose sole allegiance?Resides in dusky forest regions.
How cool and liquid seems the sky;?How blue and still the distance is!?White fleets of cloud at anchor lie?And mute are all existences,?Save here and there a bird that launches?A shaft of song among the branches.
Within this alien realm of shade?We keep a sylvan Passover;?We happy twain, a wayward maid,?A careless, gay philosopher;?But unto me she seems a Venus?And Paphian grasses nod between us.
Her drooping eyelids half conceal?A vague, uncertain mystery;?Her tender glances half reveal?A sad, impassioned history;?A tale of hopes and fears unspoken?Of thoughts that die and leave no token.
"Oh braid a wreath of budding sprays?And crown me queen," the maiden says;?"Queen of the shadowy woodland ways,?And wandering winds, whose cadences?Are unto thee that tale repeating?Which I must perish while secreting!"
I wove a wreath of leaves and buds?And flowers with golden chalices,?And crowned her queen of summer woods?And dreamy forest palaces;?Queen of that realm whose tender story?Makes life a splendor, death a glory.
Quarterly, 1856.
CORSICA
ANON.
A lonely island in the South, it shows?Its frosted brow, and waves its shaggy woods,?And sullenly above the billow broods.?Here he that shook the frighted world arose.?'Twas here he gained the strength the wing to plume,?To swoop upon the Arno's classic plains,?And drink the noblest blood of Europe's veins--?His eye but glanced and nations felt their doom!?Alas! "how art thou fall'n, oh Lucifer,?Son of the morning!" thou who wast the scourge?And glory of the earth--whose nod could urge.?Proud armies deathward at the trump of war!?And did'st thou die on lone Helena's isle??And art thou nought but dust and ashes vile?
Quarterly, 1857.
LOOKING BACKWARD
WASHINGTON GLADDEN '59
From one who belonged in a remote antiquity to the fraternity of college editors, a contribution to this centennial number[1] has been solicited. Perhaps I can do no better than to recall a few impressions of my own life in college. Every year, at the banquet, I observe that I am pushed a little nearer to the border where the almond tree flourishes, and I shall soon have a right to be reminiscent and garrulous. At the next centennial I shall not be called on; this is my last chance.
I came to college in the fall of 1856. My class had been in college for a year, so that the vicissitudes of a freshman are no part of my memory. I shall never forget that evening when I first entered Williamstown, riding on the top of the North Adams stage. The September rains had been abundant, and the meadows and slopes were at their greenest; the atmosphere was as nearly transparent as we are apt to see it; the sun was just sinking behind the Taconics, and the shadows were creeping up the eastern slopes of Williams and Prospect; as we paused on the little hill beyond Blackinton the outline of the Saddle was defined against a sky as rich and deep as ever looked down at sunset on Naples or Palermo. I thought then that I had never seen a lovelier valley, and I have had no occasion to revise that judgment. To a boy who had seen few mountains that hour was a revelation. On the side of the picturesque, the old way of transportation was better than the new. The boy who is dumped with his trunks at the station near the factory on the flat gets no such abundant entrance into Williamstown as was vouchsafed to the boy who rode in triumphantly on the top of Jim Bridges' stage.
The wide old street was as hospitable then as now; if the elms were something less paternal in their benediction their stature was fair and their shade was ample; but the aspect of the street--how greatly changed since then! There were two or three fine old colonial houses, which are standing now and are not likely to be improved upon; but most of the dwellings were of the orthodox New England village pattern, built, I suppose, to square with the theology of the Shorter Catechism, or perhaps with the measurements of the New Jerusalem, the length and breadth and height of which are equal. The front yards were all enclosed with fences, none of which were useful and few of which were ornamental. The broad-shouldered old white Congregational meeting-house stood at the top of the street in Field Park; it was the goal of restless Sophomores for several hours every Sunday, and it was also the goal of all ambitious contestants for college honors. Griffin Hall was then chapel, museum, laboratories, and recitation-rooms; East, South, and West Colleges, with Kellogg Hall, on the West lawn,--"factories of the muses," in Lowell's