I hope that Charlie Edwards of the Class of 1941 will not object if I open this Convocation with a poem that he wrote 5 years ago when he came back to campus in the fall of his 50th reunion year. Storied trees festooned with fluttering tags filter the autumn sun. My feet shuffle through burnished leaves.
Students hurry to keep rendezvous in college halls.
Giants strode these paths, their shadows mingle with the shadows I once cast and crisscross where the students go indifferent to the spirits of the past. Now the world is theirs. They are immortal, indestructible, and make of autumn chill the harbinger of spring. I watch as if from outer space. Fifty years dissolve within a flash.