Before the Curfew | Page 6

empire shared,

These to be with us envious Time has spared.
Few are the faces, so familiar then,
Our eyes still meet amid the
haunts of men;
Scarce one of all the living gathered there,
Whose
unthinned locks betrayed a silver hair,
Greets us to-day, and yet we
seem the same
As our own sires and grandsires, save in name.

There are the patriarchs, looking vaguely round
For classmates' faces,
hardly known if found;
See the cold brow that rules the busy mart;

Close at its side the pallid son of art,
Whose purchased skill with
borrowed meaning clothes,
And stolen hues, the smirking face he
loathes.
Here is the patient scholar; in his looks
You read the titles
of his learned books;
What classic lore those spidery crow's-feet
speak!
What problems figure on that wrinkled cheek!
For never
thought but left its stiffened trace,
Its fossil footprint, on the plastic
face,
As the swift record of a raindrop stands,
Fixed on the tablet of
the hardening sands.
On every face as on the written page
Each year
renews the autograph of age;
One trait alone may wasting years
defy,--
The fire still lingering in the poet's eye,
While Hope, the
siren, sings her sweetest strain,--
Non omnis moriar is its proud
refrain.
Sadly we gaze upon the vacant chair;
He who should claim its honors
is not there,--
Otis, whose lips the listening crowd enthrall
That
press and pack the floor of Boston's hall.
But Kirkland smiles,
released from toil and care
Since the silk mantle younger shoulders
wear,--
Quincy's, whose spirit breathes the selfsame fire

That filled
the bosom of his youthful sire,
Who for the altar bore the kindled
torch
To freedom's temple, dying in its porch.
Three grave professions in their sons appear,
Whose words well

studied all well pleased will hear
Palfrey, ordained in varied walks to
shine,
Statesman, historian, critic, and divine;
Solid and square
behold majestic Shaw,
A mass of wisdom and a mine of law;

Warren, whose arm the doughtiest warriors fear,
Asks of the startled
crowd to lend its ear,--
Proud of his calling, him the world loves best,

Not as the coming, but the parting guest.
Look on that form,--with eye dilating scan
The stately mould of
nature's kingliest man!
Tower-like he stands in life's unfaded prime;

Ask you his name? None asks a second time
He from the land his
outward semblance takes,
Where storm-swept mountains watch o'er
slumbering lakes.
See in the impress which the body wears
How its
imperial might the soul declares
The forehead's large expansion, lofty,
wide,
That locks unsilvered vainly strive to hide;
The lines of
thought that plough the sober cheek;
Lips that betray their wisdom
ere they speak
In tones like answers from Dodona's grove;
An eye
like Juno's when she frowns on Jove.
I look and wonder; will he be
content--
This man, this monarch, for the purple meant--
The
meaner duties of his tribe to share,
Clad in the garb that common
mortals wear?
Ah, wild Ambition, spread thy restless wings,

Beneath whose plumes the hidden cestrum stings;
Thou whose bold flight would leave earth's vulgar crowds,
And like
the eagle soar above the clouds,
Must feel the pang that fallen angels
know
When the red lightning strikes thee from below!
Less bronze, more silver, mingles in the mould
Of him whom next
my roving eyes behold;
His, more the scholar's than the statesman's
face,
Proclaims him born of academic race.
Weary his look, as if an
aching brain
Left on his brow the frozen prints of pain;
His voice
far-reaching, grave, sonorous, owns
A shade of sadness in its
plaintive tones,
Yet when its breath some loftier thought inspires


Glows with a heat that every bosom fires.
Such Everett seems; no
chance-sown wild flower knows
The full-blown charms of culture's

double rose,--
Alas, how soon, by death's unsparing frost,
Its bloom
is faded and its fragrance lost!
Two voices, only two, to earth belong,
Of all whose accents met the
listening throng:
Winthrop, alike for speech and guidance framed,

On that proud day a twofold duty claimed;
One other
yet,--remembered or forgot,--
Forgive my silence if I name him not.

Can I believe it? I, whose youthful voice
Claimed a brief
gamut,--notes not over choice,
Stood undismayed before the solemn
throng,
And propria voce sung that saucy song
Which even in
memory turns my soul aghast,--
Felix audacia was the verdict cast.
What were the glory of these festal days
Shorn of their grand
illumination's blaze?
Night comes at last with all her starry train
To
find a light in every glittering pane.
From "Harvard's" windows see
the sudden flash,--
Old "Massachusetts" glares through every sash;

From wall to wall the kindling splendors run
Till all is glorious as the
noonday sun.
How to the scholar's mind each object brings
What some historian
tells, some poet sings!
The good gray teacher whom we all revered--

Loved, honored, laughed at, and by freshmen feared,
As from old
"Harvard," where its light began,
From hall to hall the clustering
splendors ran--
Took down his well-worn Eschylus and read,
Lit by
the rays a thousand tapers shed,
How the swift herald crossed the
leagues between
Mycenae's monarch and his faithless queen;
And
thus he read,--my verse but ill displays
The Attic picture, clad in
modern phrase
On Ida's summit flames the kindling pile,
And Lemnos answers from
his rocky isle;
From Athos next it