Then guard, guard, safe this hived honey. Meet
It is that we who freely take and eat,
Remember those whose toil has made it sweet, —

Remember those who build where others rest.
Sic vos non vobis , — Maro's bitter jest, —
O ye whose bounty makes our leisure blest!

We speak it now as benediction. Sage,
Prophet, and poet, — ye whose painful page
Reveals the scholar's toilsome heritage, —

Ye who have made your own the high employ
To lift the sodden heart of man with joy,
With awe and pity purge his dull alloy, —

Ye who in loneliness have watched the maze
Of secret nature; whose ungrudging days
Forgotten feed for us the altar-blaze:

To each and all our ready lips confess
An unforgetting gratitude, and bless
The legacy of such indebtedness.