“O Caesar, we who are about to dieSalute you!” was the gladiators’ cryIn the arena, standing face to faceWith death and with the Roman populace. O ye familiar scenes,—ye groves of pine,That once were mine and are no longer mine,—Thou river, widening through the meadows greenTo the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,—Ye halls, in whose seclusion and reposePhantoms of fame, like exhalations, roseAnd vanished,—we who are about to die,Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,And the Imperial Sun that scatters downHis sovereign splendors upon grove and town. Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear!We are forgotten; and in your austereAnd calm indifference, ye little careWhether we come or go, or whence or where.What passing generations fill these halls,What passing voices echo front these walls,Ye heed not; we are only as the blast,A moment heard, and then forever past. Not so the teachers who in earlier daysLed our bewildered feet through learning’s maze;They answer us—alas! what have I said?What greetings come there from the voiceless dead?What salutation, welcome, or reply?What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie?They are no longer here; they all are goneInto the land of shadows,—all save one.Honor and reverence, and the good reputeThat follows faithful service as its fruit,Be unto him, whom living we salute. The great Italian poet, when he madeHis dreadful journey to the realms of shade,Met there the old instructor of his youth,And cried in tones of pity and of ruth:“Oh, never from the memory of my heartYour dear, paternal image shall depart,Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,Taught me how mortals are immortalized;How grateful am I for that patient careAll my life long my language shall declare.” To-day we make the poet’s words our ownAnd utter them in plaintive undertone;Nor to the living only be they said,But to the other living called the dead,Whose dear, paternal images appearNot wrapped in gloom, but robed in sunshine here;Whose simple lives, complete and without flaw,Were part and parcel of great Nature’s law;Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid“Here is thy talent in a napkin laid,”But labored in their sphere, as men who liveIn the delight that work alone can give.Peace be to them; eternal peace and rest,And the fulfilment of the great behest:“Ye have been faithful over a few things,Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings.” And ye who fill the places we once filled,And follow in the furrows that we tilled,Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high,We who are old, and are about to die,Salute you; hail you; take your hands in ours,And crown you with our welcome as with flowers!How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleamsWith its illusions, aspirations, dreams!Book of Beginnings, Story without End,Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!Aladdin’s Lamp, and Fortunatus’ Purse,That holds the treasures of the universe!All possibilities are in its hands,No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands;In its sublime audacity of faith,“Be thou removed!” it to the mountain saith,And with ambitious feet, secure and proud,Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud! As ancient Priam at the Scaean gateSat on the walls of Troy in regal stateWith the old men, too old and weak to fight,Chirping like grasshoppers in their delightTo see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield,Of Trojans and Achaians in the field;So from the snowy summits of our yearsWe see you in the plain, as each appears,And question of you; asking, “Who is heThat towers above the others? Which may beAtreides, Menelaus, Odysseus,Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus?” Let him not boast who puts his armor onAs he who puts it off, the battle done.Study yourselves; and most of all note wellWherein kind Nature meant you to excel.Not every blossom ripens into fruit;Minerva, the inventress of the flute,Flung it aside, when she her face surveyedDistorted in a fountain as she played;The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fateWas one to make the bravest hesitate. Write on your doors the saying wise and old,“Be bold! be bold!” and everywhere,—”Be bold;Be not too bold!” Yet better the excessThan the defect; better the more than less;Better like Hector in the field to die,Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly. And now, my classmates; ye remaining fewThat number not the half of those we knew,Ye, against whose familiar names not yetThe fatal asterisk of death is set,Ye I salute! The horologe of TimeStrikes the half-century with a solemn chime,And summons us together once again,The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain. Where are the others? Voices from the deepCaverns of darkness answer me: “They sleep!”I name no names; instinctively I feelEach at some well-remembered grave will kneel,And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss,For every heart best knoweth its own loss.I see their scattered gravestones gleaming whiteThrough the pale dusk of the impending night;O’er all alike the impartial sunset throwsIts golden lilies mingled with the rose;We give to each a tender thought, and passOut of the graveyards with their tangled grass,Unto these scenes frequented by our feetWhen we were young, and life was fresh and sweet. What shall I say to you? What can I sayBetter than silence is? When I surveyThis throng of faces turned to meet my own,Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown,Transformed the very landscape seems to be;It is the same, yet not the same to me.So many memories crowd upon my brain,So many ghosts are in the wooded plain,I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread,As from a house where some one lieth dead.I cannot go;—I pause;—I hesitate;My feet reluctant linger at the gate;As one who struggles in a troubled dreamTo speak and cannot, to myself I seem. Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears!Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years!Whatever time or space may intervene,I will not be a stranger in this scene.Here every doubt, all indecision, ends;Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends! Ah me! the fifty years since last we metSeem to me fifty folios bound and setBy Time, the great transcriber, on his shelves,Wherein are written the histories of ourselves.What tragedies, what comedies, are there;What joy and grief, what rapture and despair!What chronicles of triumph and defeat,Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat!What records of regrets, and doubts, and fearsWhat pages blotted, blistered by our tears!What lovely landscapes on the margin shine,What sweet, angelic faces, what divineAnd holy images of love and trust,Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust! Whose hand shall dare to open and exploreThese volumes, closed and clasped forevermore?Not mine. With reverential feet I pass;I hear a voice that cries, “Alas! alas!Whatever hath been written shall remain,Nor be erased nor written o’er again;The unwritten only still belongs to thee:Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be.” As children frightened by a thunder-cloudAre reassured if some one reads aloudA tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught,Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought,Let me endeavor with a tale to chaseThe gathering shadows of the time and place,And banish what we all too deeply feelWholly to say, or wholly to conceal. In mediaeval Rome, I know not where,There stood an image with its arm in air,And on its lifted finger, shining clear,A golden ring with the device, “Strike here!”Greatly the people wondered, though none guessedThe meaning that these words but half expressed,Until a learned clerk, who at noondayWith downcast eyes was passing on his way,Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well,Whereon the shadow of the finger fell;And, coming back at midnight, delved, and foundA secret stairway leading underground.Down this he passed into a spacious hall,Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall;And opposite, in threatening attitude,With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood.Upon its forehead, like a coronet,Were these mysterious words of menace set:“That which I am, I am; my fatal aimNone can escape, not even yon luminous flame!” Midway the hall was a fair table placed,With cloth of gold, and golden cups enchasedWith rubies, and the plates and knives were gold,And gold the bread and viands manifold.Around it, silent, motionless, and sad,Were seated gallant knights in armor clad,And ladies beautiful with plume and zone,But they were stone, their hearts within were stone;And the vast hall was filled in every partWith silent crowds, stony in face and heart. Long at the scene, bewildered and amazedThe trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed;Then from the table, by his greed made bold,He seized a goblet and a knife of gold,And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang,The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang,The archer sped his arrow, at their call,Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall,And all was dark around and overhead;—Stark on the door the luckless clerk lay dead! The writer of this legend then recordsIts ghostly application in these words:The image is the Adversary old,Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold;Our lusts and passions are the downward stairThat leads the soul from a diviner air;The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and boneBy avarice have been hardened into stone;The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelfTempts from his books and from his nobler self. The scholar and the world! The endless strife,The discord in the harmonies of life!The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books;The market-place, the eager love of gain,Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain! But why, you ask me, should this tale be toldTo men grown old, or who are growing old?It is too late! Ah, nothing is too lateTill the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.Cato learned Greek at eighty; SophoclesWrote his grand Oedipus, and SimonidesBore off the prize of verse from his compeers,When each had numbered more than fourscore years,And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,Had but begun his Characters of Men.Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,Completed Faust when eighty years were past.These are indeed exceptions; but they showHow far the gulf-stream of our youth may flowInto the arctic regions of our lives.Where little else than life itself survives. As the barometer foretells the stormWhile still the skies are clear, the weather warm,So something in us, as old age draws near,Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere.The nimble mercury, ere we are aware,Descends the elastic ladder of the air;The telltale blood in artery and veinSinks from its higher levels in the brain;Whatever poet, orator, or sageMay say of it, old age is still old age.It is the waning, not the crescent moon;The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon;It is not strength, but weakness; not desire,But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,The burning and consuming element,But that of ashes and of embers spent,In which some living sparks we still discern,Enough to warm, but not enough to burn. What then? Shall we sit idly down and sayThe night hath come; it is no longer day?The night hath not yet come; we are not quiteCut off from labor by the failing light;Something remains for us to do or dare;Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;Not Oedipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode,Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rodeOut of the gateway of the Tabard Inn,But other something, would we but begin;For age is opportunity no lessThan youth itself, though in another dress,And as the evening twilight fades awayThe sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
