  [Reunion of ??????? ??? ????? Society, June 16, 1875.] Would I might utter all my heart can feel! But there are thoughts weak words will not reveal; The rarest fruitage is the last to fall; The strongest language hath no words at all. When first the uncouth student comes in sight— A sturdy plant, just struggling toward the light— And timidly invades his classic home, And gazes at the high-perched college dome, Striving, through eyes with a vague yearning dim, To spy some future glory there for him, A child in thought, a man in strong desire, A clod of clay, vexed by a restless fire, When, homesick, heart-sick, tired, and desolate, He leans himself 'gainst Learning's iron gate, While all the future frowns upon his track, And all the past conspires to pull him back; When, with tired resolution in his looks, He bends above the cabalistic books, And strives, with knitted forehead throbbing hot, To learn what older students have forgot; And wonders how the Romans and the Greeks Could cry aloud and spare their jaws and cheeks; And wants the Algebraic author put On an equation, tied there, head and foot, Which then, with all Reduction's boasted strength, May be expanded to prodigious length; When he reflects, with rueful, pain-worn phiz, What a sad, melancholy dog he is, And how much less unhappy and forlorn Are all those students who are not yet born; When Inexperience like a worm is twined Around the clumsy fingers of his mind, And Discipline, a stranger yet unknown, Struts grandly by and leaves him all alone; What cheers him better than to feel and see Some other one as badly off as he? Or the sincere advice and kindly aid Of those well versed in Study's curious trade? What help such solace and improvement lends As the hand-grasp of Brothers and of Friends? When, with a wildly ominous halloo, The frisky Freshman shuffles into view, And shouts aloud the war-cry of his clan, And makes friends with the devil like a man: When, looking upward at the other classes, He dubs them as three tandem-teams of asses, And, scarcely knowing what he does it for, Vows against them unmitigated war, And aims to show them that though they may tread In stately, grand procession o'er his head, The animated pathway that they scorn, May sometimes bristle with a hidden thorn; When, with a vigilance that to nothing yields, He scans the fruitage of the neighboring fields, And in the solemn night-time doth entwine Affection's fingers round the melon-vine; When the tired wagon from its sheltering shed To strange, uncouth localities is led, And, with the night for a dissecting-room, Is analyzed amid the friendly gloom; When the hushed rooster, cheated of his cry, From his spoiled perch bids this vain world good-bye; When, in the chapel, an unwilling guest, And living sacrifice, a cow doth rest; When from the tower, the bell's notes, pealing down, Rouse up the fireman from the sleeping town, Who, rushing to the scene, with duty fired, Finds his well-meant assistance unrequired, And, creeping homeward, steadily doth play Upon the third commandment all the way; When are fired off, with mirth-directed aims, At the staid Alma Mater, various games, As feline juveniles themselves regale In the lithe folds of the maternal tail, And when these antics have gone far enough, Comes from her paw a well-considered cuff, What more to soothe the chastened spirit tends Than sympathy from Brothers and from Friends? When the deep Sophomore has just begun The study of his merits, one by one, And found that he, a bright scholastic blade, Is fearfully and wonderfully made; Discovers how much greater is his share Of genius than he was at first aware; When, with a ken beyond his tender age, He sweeps o'er History's closely printed page, Conjecturing how this world so long endured, With his co-operation unsecured; When, with his geometrical survey Trigonometrically brought in play, He scans two points, with firm, unmoved design To join them sooner than by one straight line; When he, with oratoric hand astir, Rolls back the tide of ages—as it were; When Cicero he decides for reading fit, And tolerates happy Horace for his wit; When he across ZoÖlogy takes sight, To see what creatures were created right, And looks the plants that heaven has fashioned through, To see if they were rightly finished, too; When he his aid to any cause can lend, In readiness, on short notice, to ascend From any well-worn point, secure and soon, In his small oratorical balloon, Expecting, when his high trip's end appears, Descent upon a parachute of cheers; When he decides, beneath a load of care, What whiskered monogram his face shall wear; When, from his mind's high shoulders cropping out, Linguistic feathers constantly do sprout, Which, ere they meet the cool outsider's scoff, Require a quiet, friendly picking-off; What better to this healthy process lends, Than the critiques of Brothers and of Friends? When the spruce Junior, not disposed to shirk, Begins to get down fairly to his work, Strives to run foremost in the college race, Or at least fill a creditable place; When he bears, o'er the rough and hard highway, The heat and burden of the college day, And hastes—his mental lungs all out of breath— As if it were a race of life and death; When with some little doubt his brain is fraught, That he's not quite so brilliant as he thought, And he would strengthen his lame talent still, By wrapping 'round the bandage of his will; When, undergoing the reaction drear That follows up the Sophomoric year, He finds each task much harder than before, And tarries long at every phrase's door, And pauses o'er his dull oration's page, Then tears it into pieces in a rage; When, had he fifty ink-stands, he could throw Each at some devil fraught with fancied woe; And when, perchance, atop of all this gloom, In his heart's world there's yet sufficient room |
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