The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-07-29
POEM
delivered Before the Alumni Association of
Lafayette ColIege, July %, 1S00.

Ihat make these places lOVedi
What heart refuses to recall,
And yet remains unmoved,
The thousand joys that once fmpregned
The generous soul Of youth,
The myriad hopes that dawned and reigned
AS truth unfolded truth?
A span seem all the rushing years:
Twas yesterday we stood,
Strong in resolves, weak in our fears,
Amid the wise and good
Who, heaven ordained, watched DER our minds
Taught us, and with us hoped,
Tore down from Thought the dark ming blinds,
And Reasons portals oped.
Beyond the realm Of home and parents care
The palptatng students humbly dare
A life unknown, but which is guarded well
BY faithful honest, upright sentinel
Men who by training early learn to know
What to withhold for good, what to bestow,
When to encourage thought, when to restrain,
How to expand that subtle substance-brain.
Their wisdom weighed, their qualities all told,
The home now offered brighter than the Old
The halls are entered, now the race begins
VIII it be run unmarr'd by petty sins?
But witness now the mighty transformation,
And see how tumbles every youths Creation:-
Grim as confessor
He stalks to his task
Gapes at the professor
AS much as to ask
care you he that stands
In loco parentts'
Ifso, then to mischief,
My mind fully bent is;
How pleasant to rufe
That face all suavity,
With wild antc and shunie
Upset all that gravity!
l can't bear to be chilled
BY example so frigid;
shant hearken to precepts
SO threadbare and rigid"
This doctrine announced,
He soon learns to be sly,
And the battle that follows
Is fought with the eye.
Then feeby, firmly now, a line is drawn
Around a science ancient as the dawn
That woke on chaos BY it man is taught
How worlds are formed, how ornaments are
wrought
The sun is weighed the planet finds place,
The meteor's guarded in erratic race
Seasons are counted, waves recede and flow,
Mountains are levelled, enterprises grow;
Nothing too great-it can the world unswing;
Nothing too small-it builds the watch's spring,
All power, save what OmnipOtence reserves,
Obedience yields to man, his will observes.
o blessed science, key to natures plan,
That opens all her mysteries to man!
Thus Newton, junior, with mis- heart elate,
On mathematics would expatlate.
But when down with ennui,
Or fit of home sickness,
Dimension soon loses
It's length, breadth, and thickness
What cares he for the moon,
How it wanes or how wakes,
For its phases and hazes,
And sharp parallaXes?
He prefers not to join
In a solar Irritation;
So, ''by your leave, sir"
Declines declination;
And though 'twere delicate
Subject to mention,
He believes all is wrong
About right ascension.
heart broke in pieces
Might enlist his affections
But not black-boarded fractures
Called conical sections.
How horribly dry and
Unmeasured is the chant
About axis and angle,
Sign, tangent, and secant!
Then what sense in correcting.
With nice calculation,
That orbital freak
Yclept perturbation!
Will there neer be an end
To these spheres and ellipses
How imperfect the system
That suffers ecpses
Why 1ne theories spin
On the matter Of light,
grow dull DER subject
SO cheerful and bright?
The once favored science
That filed him with rapture
Loses much Of its glow
In the strife for its capture
Yet the difference is co mmon-
So common, in fact,
That without the ideal
Men seldom would act
Without ultimate hope,
Without object or aim,
Life's heavy, cold logic
Would be limitless pain.
Dream on then, youth,
And murmur and toll
The blaze will grow steady,
Let the lamp but have oil.
Another view:
AS that, so this its quarter stages hath;
The first decade Of manhood is the year
With freshmen spent, the period of essay,
When thoughts antenn9, ever busy, try
Emprses walls and cast about for points
TO pierce the weakest, salient most to mount.
The second, sophomore, when habitude
OF business settles DER the man, drives him
Within himself, and throws oblivion DER
The thousand sweets which give to life zest,
And make the prize enjoyable when gained.
The third is junior-nOw fruition crowns
The years well spent; a moments leisure here
And there, remission argues from the toll
Which now its freight of consequences brings,
But woe to him who opportunity
Hath lost The fourth decade the senior year