Edmund Clarence Stedman

Dartmouth Ode

I

PRELUDE

⁠A wind and a voice from the North!
⁠A courier-wind sent forth
⁠From the mountains to the sea:
⁠A summons borne to me
From halls which the Muses haunt, 
           from hills where the heart and the wind are free!

⁠"Come from the outer throng!"
⁠(Such was the burden it bore,)
⁠"Thou who hast gone before,
⁠Hither! and sing us a song,
Far from the round of the town and 
           the sound of the great world's roar!"

⁠O masterful voice of Youth,
That will have, like the upland wind, its own wild way!
O choral words, that with every season rise
Like the warblings of orchard-birds at break of day!
O faces, fresh with the light of morning skies!
No marvel world-worn toilers seek you here,
Even as they life renew, from year to year,
In woods and meadows lit with blossoming May;
But O, blithe voices, that have such sweet power,
⁠Unto your high behest this summer hour
What answer has the poet? how shall he frame his lay?

II

THEME

⁠"What shall my song rehearse?" I said
⁠To a wise bard, whose hoary head
⁠Is bowed, like Kearsarge crouching low
⁠Beneath a winter weight of snow,
⁠But whose songs of passion, joy, or scorn,
⁠Within a fiery heart are born.

⁠"What can I spread, what proper feast
⁠For these young Magi of the East?
⁠What wisdom find, what mystic lore,
⁠What chant they have not heard before?
⁠Strange words of old has every tongue
⁠Those happy cloistered hills among;
⁠For each riddle I divine
⁠They can answer me with nine;
⁠Their footsteps by the Muse are led,
⁠Their lips on Plato's honey fed;
⁠Their eyes have skill to read the page
⁠Of Theban bard or Attic sage;
⁠For them all Nature's mysteries,—
⁠The deep-down secrets of the seas,
⁠The cyclone's whirl, the lightning's shock,
⁠The language of the riven rock;
⁠They know the starry sisters seven,—
⁠What clouds the molten suns enfold,
⁠And all the golden woof of heaven
⁠Unravelled in their lens behold!
⁠Gazing in a thousand eyes,
⁠So rapt and clear, so wonder-wise,
⁠What shall my language picture, then,
Beyond their wont—that has not reached their ken?

⁠"What else are poets used to sing,
Who sing of youth, than laurelled fame and love?
⁠But ah! it needs no words to move
⁠Young hearts to some impassioned vow,
⁠To whom already on the wing
⁠The blind god hastens. Even now
⁠Their pulses quiver with a thrill
⁠Than all that wisdom wiser still.
Nor any need to tell of rustling bays,
Of honor ever at the victor's hand,
⁠To them who at the portals stand
Like mettled steeds,—each eager from control
To leap, and, where the corso lies ablaze,
Let out his speed and soonest pass the goal.

⁠"What is there left? what shall my verse
⁠Within those ancient halls rehearse?"
Deep in his heart my plaint the minstrel weighed,
⁠And a subtle answer made:
⁠"The world that is, the ways of men,
⁠Not yet are glassed within their ken.
⁠Their foster-mother holds them long,—
Long, long to youth,—short, short to age, appear
⁠The rounds of her Olympic Year,—
Their ears are quickened for the trumpet-call.
⁠Sing to them one true song,
⁠Ere from the Happy Vale they turn,
Of all the Abyssinian craved to learn,
And dared his fate, and scaled the mountain-wall
To join the ranks without, and meet what might befall."

III

VESTIGIA RETRORSUM

⁠⁠Gone the Arcadian age,
⁠When, from his hillside hermitage
⁠Sent forth, the gentle scholar strode
⁠At ease upon a royal road,
⁠And found the outer regions all they seem
⁠⁠In Youth's prophetic dream.
⁠The graduate took his station then
⁠By right, a ruler among men:
⁠Courtly the three estates, and sure;
⁠The bar, the bench, the pulpit, pure;
⁠No cosmic doubts arose, to vex
⁠The preacher's heart, his faith perplex.
⁠Content in ancient paths he trod,
⁠Nor searched beyond his Book for God.
⁠Great virtue lurked in many a saw
⁠And in the doctor's Latin lay;
⁠Men thought, lived, died, in the appointed way.
⁠Yet eloquence was slave to law,
⁠And law to right: the statesman sought
⁠A patriot's fame, and served his land, unbought,
And bore erect his front, and held his oath in awe.

IV

ÆREA PROLES

⁠But, now, far other days
⁠Have made less green the poet's bays,—
⁠Have less revered the band and gown,
⁠The grave physician's learnèd frown,—
⁠Shaken the penitential mind
⁠That read the text nor looked behind,—
⁠Brought from his throne the bookman down,
⁠Made hard the road to station and renown!
⁠Now from this seclusion deep
⁠The scholar wakes,—as one from sleep,
⁠As one from sleep remote and sweet,
⁠In some fragrant garden-close
⁠Between the lily and the rose,
⁠Roused by the tramp of many feet,
⁠Leaps up to find a ruthless, warring band,
⁠Dust, strife, an untried weapon in his hand!
⁠The time unto itself is strange,
⁠Driven on from change to change,
⁠Neither of past nor present sure,
⁠The ideal vanished nor the real secure.
⁠Heaven has faded from the skies,
⁠Faith hides apart and weeps with clouded eyes;
⁠A noise of cries we hear, a noise of creeds,
⁠While the old heroic deeds
⁠Not of the leaders now are told, as then,
⁠But of lowly, common men.
⁠See by what paths the loud-voiced gain
⁠Their little heights above the plain:
⁠Truth, honor, virtue, cast away
⁠For the poor plaudits of a day!
⁠Now fashion guides at will
⁠The artists brush, the writer's quill,
⁠While, for a weary time unknown,
⁠The reverent workman toils alone,
⁠Asking for bread and given but a stone.
⁠Fettered with gold the statesman's tongue;
⁠Now, even the church, among
⁠New doubts and strange discoveries, half in vain
⁠Defends her long, ancestral reign;
⁠Now, than all others grown more great,
⁠That which was the last estate
⁠By turns reflects and rules the age,—
Laughs, scolds, weeps, counsels, jeers,—a jester and sage!

V

ENCHANTMENTS

⁠Here in Learning's shaded haunt,
⁠The battle-fugue and mingled cries forlorn
Softened to music seem, nor the clear spirit daunt;
⁠Here, in the gracious world that looks
⁠From earth and sky and books,
⁠Easeful and sweet it seems all else to scorn
⁠Than works of noble use and virtue born;
⁠Brave hope and high ambition consecrate
⁠Our coming years to something great.
⁠But when the man has stood,
⁠Anon, in garish outer light,
⁠Feeling the first wild fever of the blood
⁠That places self with self at strife
⁠Whether to hoard or drain the wine of life,—
⁠When the broad pageant flares upon the sight,
⁠And tuneful Pleasure plumes her wing
⁠And the crowds jostle and the mad bells ring,—
⁠Then he, who sees the vain world take slow heed
⁠Albeit of his worthiest and best,
⁠And still, through years of failure and unrest,
⁠Would keep inviolate his vow,
⁠Of all his faith and valor has sore need!
⁠Even then, I know, do nobly as we will,
⁠What we would not, we do, and see not how;
⁠That which we would, is not, we know not why;
⁠Some fortune holds us from our purpose still,—
Chance sternly beats us back, and turns our steps awry!

VI

YOUTH AND AGE

⁠How slow, how sure, how swift,
⁠The sands within each glass,
⁠The brief, illusive moments, pass!
⁠Half unawares we mark their drift
⁠Till the awakened heart cries out,—Alas!
⁠Alas, the fair occasion fled,
⁠The precious chance to action all unwed!
⁠And murmurs in its depths the old refrain,—
Had we but known betimes what now we know in vain!

⁠When the veil from the eyes is lifted
⁠The seer's head is gray;
⁠When the sailor to shore has drifted
⁠The sirens are far away.
⁠Why must the clearer vision,
⁠The wisdom of Life's late hour,
⁠Come, as in Fate's derision,
⁠When the hand has lost its power?
⁠Is there a rarer being,
⁠Is there a fairer sphere
⁠Where the strong are not unseeing,
⁠And the harvests are not sere;
⁠Where, ere the season's dwindle
⁠They yield their due return;
⁠Where the lamps of knowledge kindle
⁠While the flames of youth still burn?
⁠O for the young man's chances!
⁠O for the old man's will!
⁠Those flee while this advances,
⁠And the strong years cheat us still.

VII

WHAT CHEER?

⁠Is there naught else?—you say,—
⁠No braver prospect far away?
⁠No gladder song, no ringing call
⁠Beyond the misty mountain-wall?
⁠And were it thus indeed, I know
⁠Your hearts would still with courage glow;
⁠I know how yon historic stream
⁠Is laden yet, as in the past,
⁠With dreamful longings on it cast,
⁠By those who saunter from the crown
⁠Of this broad slope, their reverend Academe,—
⁠Who reach the meadowed banks, and lay them down
⁠On the green sward, and set their faces south,
⁠Embarked in Fancy's shallop there,
⁠And with the current seek the river's mouth,
⁠Finding the outer ocean grand and fair.
⁠Ay, like a stream's perpetual tide,
⁠Wave after wave each blithe, successive throng
⁠Must join the main and wander far and wide.
⁠To you the golden, vanward years belong!
⁠Ye need not fear to leave the shore:
⁠Not seldom youth has shamed the sage
⁠With riper wisdom,—but to age
⁠Youth, youth, returns no more!
⁠Be yours the strength by will to conquer fate,
⁠Since to the man who sees his purpose clear,
⁠And gains that knowledge of his sphere
⁠Within which lies all happiness,—
⁠Without, all danger and distress,—
⁠And seeks the right, content to strive and wait,
To him all good things flow, nor honor crowns him late.

VIII

PHAROS

⁠One such there was, that brother elder-born
⁠And loftiest,—from your household torn
⁠In the rathe spring-time, ere
⁠His steps could seek their olden pathways here.
⁠Mourn!
⁠Mourn, for your Mother mourns, of him bereft,—
⁠Her strong one! he is fallen:
⁠But has left
⁠His works your heritage and guide,
⁠Through East and West his stalwart fame divide.
⁠Mourn, for the liberal youth,
⁠The undaunted spirit whose quintessence rare,
⁠Fanned by the Norseland air,
⁠Saw flaming in its own white heat the truth
⁠That Man, whate'er his ancestry,
⁠Tanned by what sun or exiled from what shore,
⁠Hears in his soul the high command,—Be Free!
⁠For him who, at the parting of the ways,
⁠Disdained the flowery path, and gave
⁠His succor to the hunted Afric slave,
⁠Whose cause he chose nor feared the world's dispraise;
⁠Yet found anon the right become the might,
⁠And, in the long revenge of time,
⁠Lived to renown and hoary years sublime.
⁠Ye know him now, your beacon-light!
⁠Ay, he was fronted like a tower,—
⁠In thought large-moulded, as of frame;
⁠He that, in the supreme hour,
⁠Sat brooding at the river-heads of power
⁠With sovereign strength for every need that came!
⁠Not for that blameless one the place
⁠That opens wide to men of lesser race;—
⁠Even as of old the votes are given,
⁠And Aristides is from Athens driven;
⁠But for our statesmen, in his grander trust
⁠No less the undefiled, The Just,—
⁠With poesy and learning lightly worn,
⁠And knees that bent to Heaven night and morn,—
⁠For him that sacred, unimpassioned seat,
⁠Where right and wrong for stainless judgment meet
⁠Above the greed, the strife, the party call.—
Henceforth let Chase's robes on no base shoulders fall!

IX

ATLANTIS SURGENS

⁠Well may your hearts be valiant,—ye who stand
⁠Within that glory from the past,
⁠And see how ripe the time, how fair the land
⁠In which your lot is cast!
⁠For us alone your sorrow,
⁠Ye children of the morrow,—
⁠For us, who struggle yet, and wait,
⁠Sent forth too early and too late!
⁠But yours shall be our tenure handed down,
⁠Conveyed in blood, stamped with the martyr's crown;
⁠For which the toilers long have wrought,
⁠And poets sung, and heroes fought;
⁠The new Saturnian age is yours,
⁠That juster season soon to be
⁠On the near coasts (whereto your vessels sail
⁠Beyond the darkness and the gale),
⁠Of proud Atlantis risen from the sea!
⁠You shall not know the pain that now endures
⁠The surge, the smiting of the waves,
⁠The overhanging thunder,
⁠The shades of night which plunge engulfed under
⁠Those yawning island-caves;
⁠But in their stead for you shall glisten soon
⁠The coral circlet and the still lagoon,
⁠Green shores of freedom, blest with calms,
⁠And sunlit streams and meads, and shadowy palms:
⁠Such joys await you, in our sorrows' stead;
⁠Thither our charts have almost led;
Nor in that land shall worth, truth, courage, ask for alms.

X

VALETE ET SALVETE

⁠O, trained beneath the Northern Star!
⁠Worth, courage, honor, these indeed
⁠Your sustenance and birthright are!
⁠Now, from her sweet dominion freed,
⁠Your Foster Mother bids you speed;
⁠Her gracious hands the gates unbar,
⁠Her richest gifts you bear away,
⁠Her memories shall be your stay:
Go where you will, her eyes your course shall mark afar.