Classic Poem

CAMBRIDGE

In the dead season when the boughs are bare
And chill from Labrador the wild winds blow
Beneath these outstretched arms that show so fair
In hanging sleeves that Summer bids them wear
A pilgrim round his birth-place wandering slow
As wayward memory led him here or there,
With lingering footsteps tracked the virgin snow.

Stripped of his royal vestments, naked, lone,
The immemorial monarch of the plain
Sat crownless, shivering on his marble throne;
Full many a bitter winter had he known
And shook his leaves in many a blinding rain
And felt his far-stretched rootlets tug and strain
When the roof-rending hurricane had blown.

Then he whom cradle memories lured to stray
Beneath the shadeless boughs that idly spread
Their net of crossing branches, tangled spray,
Against the sky's round hollow, dull and gray
With clouds portending tempest, overhead,
Saw the Greek page before him where he read
" As forest-leaves the tribes of men decay. "

The mighty deeds whereof the world hath sung
As each slow-moving century led its train
Art, History, Verse have shaped and told and sung
Vain all the toil of chisel, pencil, tongue
Image and record and resounding strain —
Vain is the sweetest lyre that hand hath strung
Marble and scroll and canvas, all are vain.

From dark abysses burst the ravening tides
And grind with foaming jaws the wasting land
O'er sunken Tyre the conqueror's trireme rides
To shineless night the bannered navy glides
Memnon sinks voiceless in the Lybian sand
Through Balbec's arch the giant key-stone slides
The sceptre falls from mummied Pharoah's hand.

Earth, like a worn out medal shews no more
Her date and superscription; whence she came
Spinning her endless circles o'er and o'er
Turning the shore to sea, the sea to shore,
Forever changing, evermore the same,
Paving with mountain peaks her ocean floor,
No sage may guess, no prophet may proclaim.

Still wandering on he reached the holy ground
Where, under mossy slab and slanted stone
And shining obelisk and swelling mound
The silent generations slumber round
The village fathers modest Fame had known
Captains and Deacons, mighty men renowned
Whose crumbling bones the churchyard calls its own.

And with them mingled some of statelier name,
The ruffled Tory true to church and crown,
Esquire and Colonel; and the lofty dame
Whose glistening satin puts our pride to shame
As Copley's canvas hands her proudly down;
And grand divines whose Presidential fame
Once filled the grave old Academic town.