ODE

For the Semi-centennial Celebration of the Founding of the

Sigma Chi Fraternity, Oxford, Ohio, June 28, 1905.

A half a hundred years ago to-day

Seven youths joined hands to consecrate this shrine, Where friendship's fires might never fade away,

But glow forever with a flame divine.

Youth is the father of all fellowship,

Begetter of the Brotherhood of Men.
Oh, when his suns in twilight darkness dip,

The old-time thrills are never known again!

We drift on desert seas of selfishness,

When cold Indifference steers the bark alone; We heed no shipwreck's signals of distress,

Forgetting others' miseries in our own.

But here we anchor for one happy day,

And tread old memory-gardens of the past,
To pledge old friendships, made in morns of May-

God grant them leal and loyal to the last !

Let Youth's pink roses twine through locks of Age;

Come back, dear boy-hearts, from your tombs of yore! Oh, let us read once more from one sweet page

In that lost volume we shall clasp no more!

ODE.

Come, let us gather, old-time friends, again,

Within the temple we have loved so long; See here the old ideals, free from stain,

The old-time precepts, sweet as heavenly song.

Here, like the seven golden candlesticks

Beheld by John on Patmos long ago, Seven lights are set, on which our eyes may fix,

To guide our feet when darkness comes below.

One candlestick is Friendship, one is Truth,

And one is Faith, and Hope another yet; And one is Peace, and one called Glow of Youth,

With Love high over all the others set.

O, be they not like torches quenched in strife,

Nor light of Laodicea, soon to wane, But true as Smyrna, crowned with endless life,

And steadfast as the Philadelphian fane!

THE WORLD IS MY HOME.

I travel to East, I wander to West;
Each land that I see is dear to my breast.
I greet the green hills as I float down the Rhine,
The vineyards of France I love as if mine.
With rapture the castles of England I see,
And Switzerland's peaks are old friends to me;
A freeman of Athens, a tribune of Rome,
All men are my brothers, the world is my home.

Let Sultans and Czars make war if they will,
But let their own blood on the battlefield spill;
For none but the Fool will lift up his arm
To murder the man who has done him no harm.
Let the bigot cry out for a bloody crusade,
To pierce heathen hearts with his sanctified blade;
From mosque of the Nile to Saint Peter's dome
All men are my brothers, the world is my home.

Wherever we meet, on sea or on sod,
We are brethren of Christ, we are children of God.
They may prattle of Codes, or prate of their Creeds—
I care not for these, but for brotherly deeds.
They may boast of their Church, their Clique or their Clan-
I but yearn for the touch of a true fellow-man.
So my heart still repeats, wherever I roam,
All men are my brothers, the world is my home.