Where is the patriarch time could hardly tire, squire"? (An honest treasurer, like a black-plumed swan, Not every day our eyes may look upon.) 205 Where the tough champion who, with Calvin's sword, In wordy conflicts battled for the Lord? Where the grave scholar, lonely, calm, austere, Whose voice like music charmed the listening ear, Whose light rekindled, like the morning star 210 Still shines upon us through the gates ajar? Where the still, solemn, weary, sad-eyed man, Whose care-worn face my wondering eyes would His features wasted in the lingering strife With the pale foe that drains the student's life? 215 Where my old friend, the scholar, teacher, saint, Whose creed, some hinted, showed a speck of taint, He broached his own opinion, which is not Lightly to be forgiven or forgot; Some riddle's point, I scarce remember now, 220 Homoi, perhaps, where they said homo (If the unlettered greatly wish to know 202. Squire Farrar. ou. 205. Rev. Leonard Woods, D. D., then Professor of Theology in the Seminary. 207. The reference is to Moses Stuart, who was Professor in the Theological School, and grandfather to Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 211. Ebenezer Porter. 215. James Murdock. 222. There was an old doctrinal dispute, turning upon a divergence in meaning between two Greek words which differed only by the vowels oi, and o; two parties sprang up called respectively Homoiousians and Homoousians. Those of the curious who have time may search Among the stale conundrums of their church.) — 225 Beneath his roof his peaceful life I shared, And for his modes of faith I little cared, I, taught to judge men's dogmas by their deeds, Long ere the days of india-rubber creeds. Why should we look one common faith to find, 230 Where one in every score is color-blind? If here on earth they know not red from green, Will they see better into things unseen? Once more to time's old grave-yard I return And scrape the moss from memory's pictured urn. 235 Who, in these days when all things go by steam. Recalls the stage-coach with its four-horse team? Its sturdy driver, who remembers him? Or the old landlord, saturnine and grim, 240 And reared his sign-post farther down the road? Still in the waters of the dark Shawshine Do the young bathers splash and think they're clean? Do pilgrims find their way to Indian Ridge, Or journey onward to the far-off bridge, 245 And bring to younger ears the story back Of the broad stream, the mighty Merrimack ? Are there still truant feet that stray beyond These circling bounds to Pomp's or Haggett's pond, Or where the legendary name recalls 250 The forest's earlier tenant Deer-jump Falls"? 230. Dr. B. Joy Jeffries in his recent work on Color-Blindness takes lines 229-232 for his motto. 243. A singular formation like an embankment running for some distance through the woods near Andover. Yes, every nook these youthful feet explore, Just as our sires and grandsires did of yore; So all life's opening paths, where nature led Their fathers' feet, the children's children tread. 255 Roll the round century's five score years away, Call from our storied past that earliest day When great Eliphalet (I can see him now, Big name, big frame, big voice and beetling brow), Then young Eliphalet — ruled the rows of boys 260 In homespun gray or old world corduroys, And save for fashion's whims, the benches show Time works strange marvels; since I trod the green And swung the gates, what wonders I have seen! 265 But come what will, the sky itself may fall As things of course the boy accepts them all. Sometimes the spade is mightier than the pen; 257. Eliphalet Pearson, the first principal of the school, and in later life, professor in the Theological Seminary. 274. "Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword." Edward Bulwer Lytton's drama of Richelieu, Act II. Scene 2. 277. Layard between 1845 and 1850 unearthed Nineveh. The results of his excavations are published in the very interesting work, Nineveh and its Remains. The slabs that cracked when Nimrod's palace blazed, Unearths Mycenæ, rediscovers Troy, 280 Calmly he listens, that immortal boy. A new Prometheus tips our wands with fire, A mightier Orpheus strains the whispering wire, Whose lightning thrills the lazy winds outrun And hold the hours as Joshua stayed the sun, 285 So swift, in truth, we hardly find a place For those dim fictions known as time and space. Still a new miracle each year supplies, See at his work the chemist of the skies, Who questions Sirius in his tortured rays 290 And steals the secret of the solar blaze. Hush! while the window-rattling bugles play The nation's airs a hundred miles away! That wicked phonograph! hark! how it swears! Turn it again and make it say its prayers! 295 And was it true, then, what the story said Of Oxford's friar and his brazen head? 279. Mycena, the ancient royal city of Argos, and Troy, the scene of the Iliad, have been uncovered by "shovelling Schliemann." 281. Prometheus in Greek mythology made men of clay and animated them by means of fire which he stole from heaven. The reference is to the electric light. 282. Orpheus's skill in music was so wonderful that he could make even trees and rocks follow him. The telephone and phonograph were just coming into common use when the poem was read. 290. In the spectroscope. 296. Friar Roger Bacon, who lived in the latter half of the thirteenth century was a scientific investigator, whom popular ignorance made to be a magician. He was said to have constructed a brazen head, from which great things were to be expected when it should speak, but the exact moment could not be known. While Bacon and another friar were asleep and ar While wondering science stands, herself perplexed At each day's miracle, and asks "what next?" The immortal boy, the coming heir of all, 300 Springs from his desk to "urge the flying ball," Cleaves with his bending oar the glassy waves, With sinewy arm the dashing current braves, The same bright creature in these haunts of ours That Eton shadowed with her "antique towers." Boy! Where is he? the long-limbed youth inquires, 305 Whom his rough chin with manly pride inspires ; Ah, when the ruddy cheek no longer glows, When the bright hair is white as winter snows, When the dim eye has lost its lambent flame, 310 Sweet to his ear will be his school-boy name! Nor think the difference mighty as it seems Between life's morning and its evening dreams; Fourscore, like twenty, has its tasks and toys; In earth's wide school-house all are girls and boys. attendant was keeping watch, the brazen head spoke the words, Time is. The attendant thought that too commonplace a statement to make it worth while to wake his master. Time was, said the head, and then Time is past, and with that fell to the ground with a crash and never could be set up again. 300. See Thomas Gray's On a Distant Prospect of Eton Col ege: 304. See the ode just cited and beginning: "Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, Where grateful Science still adores |