Lexington weekly intelligencer. (Lexington, Mo.) 1871-1887, 1886-11-20
Oliver Wendell Holmes Poem.
IT THE RECEPTION OF PRESIDENT CLEVE.
LAND, AT HARVARD COLLEGE,
NOVEMBER s, 1886.

There are pairiarchs looking vaguely round
For classmates faces, hardly known If found;
See the cold brow that rules the busy mar,
Close ut its side the pallid son of art.
Whose purchased skill with borrowed mean
ing clothes,
And stolen hues the sm rking face he lOathes.
Here Is the patient scholar; in his looks
You read the titles OF his learned books;
What classic lore those spiuery crows'S feet
speak,
What problems figure on that wrinkled cheek,
For never thought but left its stiffened trace,
Its fossil footprint on the plastic face,
AS the swift record of rain drop stands.
Fixed on the tablet of the hardening sands,
On every face, as on the written page,
Each ear renews the autograph Of age;
One trait alone may wasting years defy
The fire still lingering In the poets eye;
While Hope, the siren, sings her sweetest
strain,
Non omais mortar is its proud refrain.
Three grave professions in their sons appear,
Whose words we'll studied all well pleased
Will hear,
Pafrey ordained in varied walks to shine,
Statesman, historian, critic, and divine;
Solid and square behold majestic Shaw,
A mass of wisdom and mine of law:
Warren, whose arm the dOughtiest warriors
fear,
Asks Of the startled crowd to lend its ear;
Proud of his calling, him the world loves
best
Not as the coming, but the parting guest.
As to that hour with backward steps turn,
Midway pause; behold a funeral urn.
All, sad memorial, known but all too we'll
The tale which thus its golden letters tell:
This dust. once breathing, changed its joy
Gus life
For toll and hunger, wounds and mortal
strife;
Love, friendship. learning's all-pre yalling
charms,
For the cold bivouac and the clash of arms,
The cause Of freedom won, Il race enslaved
Called back to manhood, and a marion saved.
These sons of Harvard. falling ere their prime,
Leaye their proud memory to the coming
time"
While in their still retreats our scholars turn
The mildewed pages of the past, to learn
The eeaseess labor of the sleepless BRAN,
What once has been and ne 'er shall be again
We reap the harvest of their patient toll
And find a fragrance in their midnight oil.
But let purblind mortal dare the task
10 embryo future of itself to ask,
The world reminds him, with q scorpful
laugh,
That times have changed since Prospero
Could all the wisdom Ofthe schools foretell
The dismal hour when Lisbon shook and fell.
Or name the shuddering night that toppled
down
OuI SlSIcTS pTlue, DeleaIQ whose mural
crown
Scarce had the Scowl forgot its angry lines,
When earth's blind prisoners fired their fatal
mines?
New realms, new worlds, exulting science
claims,
Still the dim future unex plored remains:
Her trembling scales the far-Of planet weigh,
Her tortIrinS prisms its elemeuts betray
We know what ores the fires of Sirius melt,
What vapOrous metals gild OriOn's belt;
Angels, archaneel,. may have yet to learn
Those hidden truths our. heayen-taught eyes
discern;
Yet vain Is knowledge, with her mystic wand
70 pierce the cloud screen and read beyond;
Once to the silent stars the fates were known,
TO US they tell no secrets but their own.
How strange the prospect to my sight appears,
Changed by the busy hands OF fifty wears!
full well know our ocean sailed Charles,
Filling and emptying through the sands and
marls
That wall his restless stream on either bank.
Not all unlOVety where the sedges rank
Lend their coarse veil the sable OOze to hide
rhat bares its b!ackness with the ebbing tide,
In other shapes to my iiumined eyes
Those ragged margins of our stream arise;
Through walls of stone the sparkling waters
flow,
In clearer depths the golden sunsets glow.
In purer waves the lamps of midnight CLEAN,
That silver Ger the unpOlluted stream.
Along his shores what stately temples rise,
What spires, that turrets print the shadoWed
skies.
Our smiling mother sees her broad domain
Spread its tall roofs along the western plain:
| Those blazoned windows blushng glories tell
| or grateful hearts that loved her long and
well;
Ion 2ilded dome that glitters in the sun
Was Dives's gift-aas, his only one
| These buttressed walls enshrine a banler,s
| name,
That hailuwed chapel hides mIsers shame:
Their wealth they left-their memory cannot
| fade,
Though age shall crumble every stone they
From high -arched alcove, through resound.
| ing halls,
Clad in iull robes majestic Science calls,
rireless, unseeping, still at Natures feet
| Whaeer she utters fearless to repeat.
| Her lips at last from every cramp released
That lsraers prophet caught from Egypts
priest.
| see the statesman. firm, sagaciOus, bold,
For llfe's long conflict cast in amplest mould:
Not his to clamor with The senseless throng
That shouts unShamed, "Our party, right
or wrong"
| But in the patriots never ending fight
10 side with truth, who changes wrong to
right.
Let not the mitre Engand's prelate wears
Next to the crown whose regal pomp il
shares,