A Williams Anthology | Page 7

of your band,?Stand up and shout aloud to Audubon,?Until from peak to peak the sound rolls round,?Until yon mountain that o'erlooks the west?Takes up the cry, of vengeance upon him?Whose strange devices break your long repose.
In vain! ye are indeed forever dumb,?Obedient to the will of Destiny,?Who sits enthroned among the stars of heaven,?And unto man's inquiring vision points?Toward the westering sun forevermore.?Such is the law that rules the universe;--?Planets and systems, e'en the sun himself,?Around one common point progressive move.?And thus a few millenniums more shall man?Proclaim the march of mind, and when ye pass?Into oblivion with your weight of years,?When galaxies and suns are quenched in gloom,?Th' unshackled soul of man, itself a star?Lit by the smile of God, shall wing through space,?The destined heir to immortality.
Quarterly, 1859.
THE YELLOW JASMINE
FRANKLIN CARTER '62
Ye golden bells, that toss your heaven-born fragrance?On air around,?And know to make the most harmonious music?Without a sound!
Ye fragile flowers, whose delicate, dear tendrils?Upward do climb,?Reveal to us the sweet, mysterious secret?Of love sublime!
Entwining with your gentle cunning fingers?The ragged tree,?Ye leave behind ye crowns and chaplets wondrous,?Of jewelry!
Not pearls nor diamonds of a radiance peerless,?Not amethyst.?When softly swaying on the human bosom,?Or flexile wrist,
Can add to life and beauty lustrous splendor,?With grace divine,?As when ye wreathe on gnarled oak and holly?Your trailing vine!
Oh, love of God! in gracious ways unnumbered,?With gentlest touch,?Thou teachest men and pitifully showest?Of patience much!
We pray, dear Father, teach thine erring children?This lesson meet--?To climb through fragile, earth born, human tendrils?To life complete.
Quarterly, 1871.
AFTER DINNER SPEECHES
FRANKLIN CARTER '62
According to common opinion Americans are the nation most addicted to speechmaking. Laboulaye makes a good point by representing the son of a leading character in "Paris in America" discovered by his father before a large audience, in the full tide of political speech, and maintaining afterwards to the old gentleman that it is the common practice among all the boys to make a speech on every possible occasion, that they may thus fit themselves for public life.
In New York, which tends rapidly to become the center of activity for most of the important influences of our country, there are every year many dinners, anniversaries, and assemblies, at which oratory of an ephemeral nature finds expression and attention. All the?nationalities, all the religious and literary societies, all the clubs, all the distinguished foreigners, and all the leading and following colleges, must have a dinner, and every dinner must have at least a dozen speeches. Most of these speeches are more eloquent to the opinion of their authors than to the minds of their hearers.
It certainly is one of the best moral illustrations of the first law of motion that in spite of all the heroism necessary to endure such a volume of speech, the patient public seems (if we may judge from the increase in volume) every year more and more willing to sit at the tables and listen to this flow of sound. Perhaps this patience is only apparent, for competition for an opportunity to speak is said to be lively. Possibly every one of the thousands who listen is secretly comparing the eloquence of the speaker with his own skilful ability, and not quite calmly biding the time when he shall enrapture, where the present speaker wearies and annoys.
Yet not every speech made on those occasions is dull. Now and then the happy mingling of fun and sense really lifts the company out of the tiresome monotony. Were it not for these addresses beautiful and rare, we can believe that dinner speeches would be abandoned, or exchanged for a single oration from one competent to delight.
For the distinguishing mark of the dinner speech should be that it amuse not in the rough, coarse way of the demagogue, but in the subtle, fine way of the man of culture.
The dinner speeches with which the readers of this paper are perhaps most familiar, those made when the alumni of a noble college gather around the table of their alma mater, ought to be characterized by the broad sympathy, the quick insight, the flexible grace and the genial humor of the thoroughly educated man. Although to make fine dinner speeches can never be an aim worthy of an earnest man, yet to have the power and culture from which such a speech usually comes, is the highest aim in a literary regard that any man can have. It is a short-sighted and one-sighted earnestness that despises the wit and banter of society, and affects the isolation and grandeur of pure thought. The mountain summit is too far removed from the walks of men to make it possible for the recluse to wield all the influence that his powers may entitle him to exert. The metaphysician less than the poet, the country minister less than the