Edmund Clarence Stedman

Meridian

                 AN OLD-FASHIONED POEM

The Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Yale Class of 1853

Inque brevi spatio mutantur sæcla animantum
Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.

                         Lucretius, De Rer. Nat. Lib. ii.

I

The tryst is kept. How fares it with each one
At this mid hour, when mariners take the sun
And cast their reckoning? when some level height
Is reached by men who set their strength aright,—
Who for a little space the firm plateau
Tread sure and steadfast, yet who needs must know
Full soon begins the inevitable slide
Down westward slopings of the steep divide.
How stands it, comrades, at this noontide fleet,
When for an hour we gather to the meet?
Like huntsmen, rallied by the winding horn,
Who seek the shade with trophies lightly borne,
Remembering their deeds of derring-do—
What bows were bent, what arrows speeded true.
All, all have striven, and far apart have strayed:
Fling down! fill up the can! wipe off the blade!
Ring out the song! nor care, in this our mood,
What hollow echo mocks us from the wood!

Or is it with us, haply, as with those
Each man of whom the morn's long combat knows?
All veterans now: the bugle's far recall
From the hot strife has sounded sweet to all.
Welcome the rendezvous beneath the elms,
The truce, the throwing down of swords and helms!

Life is a battle! How these sayings trite
Which school-boys write—and know not what they write—
In after years begin to burn and glow!
What man is here that has not found it so?
Who here is not a soldier of the wars,
Has not his half-healed wound, his early scars,—
Has broken not his sword, or from the field
Borne often naught but honor and his shield?
Ah, ye recruits, with flags and arms unstained,
See by what toil and moil the heights are gained!
Learn of our skirmish lost, our ridges won,
The dust, the thirst beneath the scorching sun;
Then see us closer draw—by fate bereft
Of men we loved—the firm-set column left.

II

To me the picture that some painter drew
Makes answer for our past. His throng pursue
A siren, one that ever smiles before,
Almost in reach, alluring more and more.
Old, young, with outstretched hand, with eager eye,
Fast follow where her winged sandals fly,
While by some witchery unto each she seems
His dearest hope, the spirit of his dreams.
Ah, me! how like those dupes of Pleasure's chase,
Yet how unlike, we left our starting-place!
Is there not something nobler, far more true,
In the Ideal, still before our view,
Upon whose shining course we followed far
While sank and rose the night and morning star?
Ever we saw a bright glance cast behind
Or heard a word of hope borne down the wind,—
As yet we see and hear, and follow still
With faithful hearts and long-enduring will.

In what weird circle has the enchantress led
Our footsteps, so that now again they tread
These walks, and all that on the course befell
Seems to ourselves a shadow and a spell?
Was it the magic of a moment's trance,
A scholar's day-dream? Have we been, perchance,
Like that bewildered king who dipped his face
In water—while a dervish paused to trace
A mystic phrase—and, ere he raised it, lived
A score of seasons, labored, journeyed, wived
In a strange city,—Tunis or Algiers,—
And, after what had seemed so many years,
Came to himself, and found all this had been
During the palace-clock's brief noonday din?

For here the same blithe robins seem to house
In the elm-forest, underneath whose boughs
We too were sheltered; nay, we cannot mark
The five-and-twenty rings, beneath the bark,
That tell the growth of some historic tree,
Since we, too, were a part of Arcady.
And in our trance, negari, should the bell
Speak out the hour, non potest quin, 't were well
The upper or the lower room to seek
For Tully's Latin, Homer's rhythmic Greek;—
Yet were it well? ay, brothers, if, alack,
For this one day the shadow might go back!

Ah, no! with doubtful faces each on each
We look, we speak with altered, graver speech:
The spell is gone! We know what 't is to wake
From an illusive dream, at morning's break,
That we again are dark-haired, buoyant, young,—
Scanning, once more, our spring-time mates among,
The grand hexameter—that anthem free
Of the pursuing, loud-resounding sea,—
To wake, anon, and know another day
Already speeds for one whose hairs are gray,—
In this swift change to lose a third of life
Lopped by the stroke of Memory's ruthless knife,
And feel, though naught go ill, it is a pain
That youth, lost youth, can never come again!

Were the dream real, or should we idly go
To yonder halls and strive to make it so,
There listening to the voices that rehearse,
Like ours of old, the swift Ionic verse,
What silvery speech could now for us restore
The cadence that we thought to hear once more?
The low, calm utterance of him who first
Our faltering minds to clearer knowledge nursed,—
The perfect teacher, who endured our raw
Harsh bleatings with a pang we never saw;
Whose bearing was so apt we scarcely knew,
At first, the wit that lit him through and through,
Strength's surplusage; nor, after many a day
Had taught us, rated well the heart that lay
Beneath his speech, nor guessed how brave a soul
In that frail body dwelt with fine control:
Alas, no longer dwells! Time's largest theft
Was that which learning and the world bereft
Of this pure scholar,—one who had been great
In every walk where led by choice or fate,
Were not his delicate yearnings still represt
Obeying duty's every-day behest.
He shrank from note, yet might have worn at ease
The garb whose counterfeit a sad world sees
Round many a dolt who gains, and deems it fame,
One tenth the honor due to Hadley's name.

Too soon the years, gray Time's relentless breed,
Have claimed our Pascal. He is theirs indeed;
Yet three remain of the ancestral mould,
Abreast, like them who kept the bridge of old:
The true, large-hearted man so many found
A helpful guardian, stalwart, sane, and sound;
And he, by sure selection upward led,
Whom now we reverence as becomes the Head,—
The sweet polemic, pointing shafts divine
With kindly satire,—latest of the line
That dates from godly Pierson. No less dear,
And more revered with each unruffled year,
That other Grecian: he who stands aside
Watching the streams that gather and divide.
Alcestis' love, the Titan's deathless will,
We read of in his text, and drank our fill
At Plato's spring. Now, from his sacred shade,
Still on the outer world his hand is laid
In use and counsel. Whom the nation saw
Most fit for Heaven could best expound Earth's law.

His wise, kind eyes behold—nor are they loth—
The larger scope, the quarter-century's growth:
How blooms the Mother with unwrinkled brow,
To whom her wandering sons, returning now,
Come not alone, but bring their sons to prove
That children's children have a share of love.
Through them she proffers us a second chance;
With their young eyes we see her hands advance
To crown the sports once banished from her sight;
With them we see old wrong become the right,
Tread pleasant halls, a healthy life behold
Less stinted than the cloister-range of old—
When the last hour of morning sleep was lost
And prayer was sanctified by dusk and frost,
And hungry tutors taught a class unfed
That a full stomach meant an empty head.
For them a tenth Muse, Beauty, here and there
Has touched the landmarks, making all more fair;—
We knew her not, save in our stolen dreams
Or stumbling song, but now her likeness gleams
Through chapel aisles, and in the house where Art
Has builded for her praise its shrines apart.

Now the new Knowledge, risen like a sun,
Makes bright for them the hidden ways that none
Revealed to us; or haply would dethrone
The gods of old, and rule these hearts alone
From yonder stronghold. By unnumbered strings
She draws our sons to her discoverings,—
Traces the secret paths of force, the heat
That makes the stout heart give its patient beat,
Follows the stars through æons far and free,
And shows what forms have been and are to be.

Such things are plain to these we hither brought,
More strange and varied than ourselves were taught;
But has the iris of the murmuring shell
A charm the less because we know full well
Sweet Nature's trick? Is Music's dying fall
Less finely blent with strains antiphonal
Because within a harp's quick vibratings
We count the tremor of the spirit's wings?
There is a path by Science yet untrod
Where with closed eyes we walk to find out God!
Still, still, the unattained ideal lures,
The spell evades, the splendor yet endures;
False sang the poet,—there is no good in rest,
And Truth still leads us to a deeper quest.

III

But Alma Mater, with her mother-eyes
Seeing us graver grown if not more wise,—
She calls us back, dear comrades—ah, how dear,
And dearer than when each to each was near!
Time thickens blood! Enough to know that one
Our classmate was and is, and is her son;—
She looks unto the East, the South, the West,
Asking, "Now who have kept my maxims best?
Who have most nearly held within their grasp
The fluttering robe that each essayed to clasp?"
Can ye not answer, brothers, even as I,
That still in front the vision seems to fly,—
More light and fleet her shining footsteps burn,
And speed the most when most she seems to turn?
And some have fallen, fallen from our band
Just as we thought to see them lay the hand
Upon her scarf: we know their precious names,
Their hearts, their work, their sorrows, and their fames.
Few gifts the brief years brought them, yet how few
Fell to the living as the lots we drew!
But some, who most were baffled, later found
Capricious Fortune's arms a moment wound
About them; some, who sought her on one side,
Beheld her reach them by a compass wide.
What then is Life? or what Success may be
Who, who can tell? who for another see?
From those, perchance, that closest seem to hold
Her love, her strength, her laurels, or her gold,
In this meridian hour she far has sped
And left them but her phantom mask instead.

A grave, sweet poet in a song has told
Of one, a king, who in his palace old
Hung up a bell; and placed its cord anear
His couch,—that thenceforth, when the court should hear
Its music, all might know the king had rung
With his own hand, and that its silver tongue
Gave out the words of joy he wished to say,
"I have been wholly happy on this day!"
Joy's full perfection never to him came;
Voiceless the bell, year after year the same,
Till, in his death-throes, round the cord his hand
Gathered—and there was mourning in the land.

I pray you, search the wistful past, and tell
Which of you all could ring the happy bell!
The treasure-trove, the gifts we ask of Fate,
Come far apart, come mildewed, come too late.
What says the legend? "All that man desires
Greatly at morn he gains ere day expires;"
But Age craves not the fruits that gladden Youth,—
It sits among its vineyards, full of ruth,
Finding the owner's right to what is best
Of little worth without the seeker's zest.

Yet something has been gained. Not all a waste
The light-winged years have vanished in their haste,
Howbeit their gift was scant of what we thought,
So much we thought not of they slowly wrought!
Not all a waste the insight and the zeal
We gathered here: these surely make for weal;
The current sets for him who swims upbuoyed
By the trained skill, with all his arts employed.
Coy Fortune may disdain our noblest cares,
The good she gives at last comes unawares:—
Long, long in vain,—with patience, worth, and love,—
To do her task the enchanted princess strove,
Till in the midnight pitying fairies crept
Unravelling the tangle while she slept.

This, then, the boon our Age of Wisdom brings,—
A knowledge of the real worth of things:
How poor, how good, is wealth; how surely fame
And beauty must return to whence they came,
Yet not for this less beautiful and rare—
It is their evanescence makes them fair
And worth possession. Ours the age still strong
With passions, that demand not curb nor thong;
And ours the age not old enough to set
Youth's joys above their proper worth, nor yet
So young as still to trust its empery more
Than unseen hands which lead to fortune's door.
For most have done the best they could, and all
The reign of law has compassed like a wall;
Something accrued to each, and each has seen
A Power that works for good in life's demesne.
In our own time, to many a masquerade
The hour has come when masks aside were laid:
We've seen the shams die out, the poor pretense
Cut off at last by truth's keen instruments,
The ignoble fashion wane and pass away,—
The fine return a second time, to stay,—
The knave, the quack, and all the meaner brood,
Go surely down, by the strong years subdued,
And, in the quarter-century's capping-race,
Strength, talent, honor, take and hold their place.
More glad, you say, the song I might have sung
In the free, careless days when all were young!
Now, long deferred, the sullen stroke of time
Has given a graver key, a deeper chime,
That the late singer of this strain might prove
Himself less keen for honors, more for love,
And in the music of your answer find
The charms that life to further action bind.
The Past is past; survey its course no more;
Henceforth our glasses sweep the further shore.
Five lustra, briefer than those gone, remain,
And then—a white-haired few shall meet again,
Lifting their heads that long have learned to droop,
And hear some sweeter minstrel of our group.
But stay! which one of us, alone, shall dine
At the Last Shadowy Banquet of the line?
Who knows? who does not in his heart reply,
"It matters not, so that it be not I."