Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ODE FOR GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN Poet's Biography First Line: When youth, o alma mater, on the threshold / stood Last Line: From their dust shall spring fresh bays to weave thy crown! Subject(s): Georgetown University | ||||||||
I When youth, O Alma Mater, on the threshold stood, The hot thirst of fame within the blood, And turned with longing eyes To life's giant enterprise, Under the gilded future's spell Lightly we said farewell To these dear scenes, and down yon narrow street, With throbbing heart and hastening feet, Sought the jostling throng That o'er life's highway streams along: Lightly we went, Hope in the van, While life like music ran Melodiously through heart and brain, Each step a victory, each moment gain. Lightly we went: but laden now Return with deeper love blown to full flower By riper knowledge of the absent hour: And on this day of days, When like a hundred stars upon thy brow Thy hundred years in splendour blaze, Lay at thy feet the tribute of our praise. As dew wept down on leaf and flower, when morn Grows tremulous within the east scarce born, Mirrors in every crystal drop the radiant sun, A thousand lesser lights reflecting one, Our loves receive thy love's desire, And myriad-fold return the sacred fire. II From distant lands, where in soft splendour beams The Southern Cross through silent deeps of air, Making a solemn glory of the night that seems As though angelic choirs were chanting there; From lands where winter's icy banners flare Upon rude blasts blown down in roaring war From solitudes beneath the polar star; From lands where morning's earliest rays unbar The gates of sleep to rouse the eager throng With the keen note of industry's shrill song, While slumbering cities into being start And barter roars within the busy mart; From lands where boundless prairie rolls along In endless leagues, and towering summits leap To cloudless heights above Pacific's deep, Thy many sons assemble here To greet thee in thy hundredth year Of sweet maternity, and lay aside, For this brief hour, the buckler and the spear, As armèd knights were wont of old to bide The truce of God, remembering Christ had died: From all life's walks we come in peace arrayed; Where feverish Commerce plies the looms of trade With ceaseless hum, and from the myriad ways Of Law, whose justice-tempered ægis stays And turns unbridled evil's reckless blade; Where armed with new-found powers sage Galen's art Arrests the fatal flight of Death's dread dart; Where on the stormy seas of high debate The Nation's wisdom guides the bark of state: Where sweet Religion takes sublimer part And drawing with her threefold cord above Leads fallen nature up to perfect Love. Yet not alone thy sons that here below Lift the glad voice in jubilation's song, Salute thee, but where Heaven's starry bow Rounds the vast firmament with fire, a throng Invisible, blest spirits once among Thine earthly sons take up the great refrain, Till all the blissful heights give back the strain, That falls a benediction on thy head From blessèd hands of thy belovèd dead; And thy triumphant sons thence looking down Flash on thy brow a spiritual crown, A diadem of light, whose splendour rays Immortal glory through eternal days! III When virgin Liberty yet stood Within the dawn of maidenhood, Upon these hills was fixed thy seat, The home of truth, and learning's calm retreat By blue Potomac's peaceful flood. Scarce then had died the furious beat Of rolling drum in loud alarm Sounding the patriot's call to arm Against the tyrant foe; While yet the reeking sod was warm With martyr blood spilt in the fearful throe Of battle, and the trembling earth Groaned in travail of a nation's birth, Came the man of peace, who bore The cross and laurel to the shore, Where sweet Cohonguroton's waters pour, And planted here the sacred tree. And this was he Of that same faith and race With him who, taking up the bloodless steel To make the Nation's woe or weal, Alone of all the signers dared to trace Not only his heroic name, but native place, And with the dauntless front of Freedom's son Wrote "Carroll of Carrollton!" Rejoice in thy noble stem And firm foundations wrought When minion foes were taught How priceless is the gem Of Freedom bought By patriot steel in patriot hands Against a narrow tyrant's slavish bands! Around thy cradle blew the trumpet blast Of victory, when Liberty at last Burst the chains that held her bound, And all the land leaped at the glorious sound, And from the dragon-jaws of Strife A Nation sprang to life, Strong-limbed and beautiful in power Through mighty wrestling in that heavy hour! Around thy cradle redolent Breathed the fresh fragrance of the spring Of Freedom, and its vigour blent With thine own blood, and sent Thy pulses dancing to the swing Of music born in prophecy Of all the glory yet to be! IV A century has rolled its solemn tide Along the Nation's path, and by thy walls The generations ebbed and died, Fallen in the waste of time, as falls Yon river to the distant sea And lo! the promise of thine infancy! A stately palace rears its tower-capped height Upon thy hills, truth's templed shrine, Shedding, like a beacon light, Its welcome rays across the brine To outward speeding ships that brave Midmost ocean's storm-beat wave, Or homeward struggling barks that creep To haven from the warring deep. Beneath thy roof-tree's sheltering span, Science deep in Nature's various plan From lifeless dust to living man, Houses all her lore; and Art with eyes, Within whose depths all beauty mirrored lies As in calm waters summer skies, Kindles at thy hearth her living flame; And with thee dwells the gentle Dame, Whose smile upon the exile's wandering path Like light soothed time-worn Dante's bitter wrath, Divine Philosophy, that strikes the trembling strings To the deep note that vibrates from the sum of things! V "Not all I am shall die!" Was the Roman poet's cry. Though now no conjuring priest Leads the fattened beast To the smoking altar, and the pride Of Rome lies buried in her dust, Not all, O Bard, has died, And thou hast conquered in the larger trust: Here where learning holds her seat, New-born generations greet Thee, crowning with fresh bays The triumphs of those elder days. Nor thou alone of Greek or Roman line Find'st here a temple and a shrine; The stately Mantuan, Who sang the Arms and Man, Ovid, whose melting lines in amorous flow Like torrid rivers ran, The silver-worded Cicero, The buskined muse of Sophocles And trumpet-tongued Demosthenes, Old Homer, whose heroic strain Bade gods and men contend on Troia's fatal plain, All, all the mighty train, Who made the heart and brain Of ancient letters, and who sent, As fountains of the firmament, The impetuous crystal flood Of their rich speech into the blood Of nations yet within the womb, Find here a wider reign Than universal Rome could claim! Ye quickening powers! no Stygian gloom Can quench the vital flame That breathes its glory round the classic name! Not dead, but living voices of the past, Not dead and to be cast Like blank annals of barbarian kings Into the void of forgotten things, But living souls with power to reach The human heart in human speech And bind the generations each to each, Leaping the centuries and giving breath To ancient forms snatched back from empty death, Till man in that large sympathy of mind Begot by wide communion with his kind, Across the age's broadening span Responsive greets his fellow-man! Not death, but life prevails, and though men's lives Drop off the stem like ripened fruit, Death reaps not all, the seed survives To strike in other soil the living root; So generations gathering up the past, Each reaps a widening profit from the last, And from the seed by others sown Wears the flower of wisdom as its own. VI Splendour of poet's song, the living light Of letters across the night Of ages fled, Science begirt with power To build a universe from every flower That blows, and Wisdom's glowing height, Whence the eagle mind may gaze Into the sun of truth's full blaze, Are not all the glories of thy house; These are thine by that high right Which Nature's self allows To those who consecrate their days To Learning's thorn-strewn ways: A light of still more constant glow, A flame sprung from a purer fire Than aught of human can inspire, Sheds its clear radiance on thy brow; A glory and a light that first Rose from Manresa's cave, and burst In fiery splendour on a wondering world, When meek Loyola's hand unfurled His holy standard blazoned with the line, "The glory be not ours, O Lord, but thine!" O happy issue of Pamplona's war, When sank a warrior's earthly star, Not quenched, but with rekindled beam to rise And shed celestial fires from other skies! Where Error rears its crested pride Against the spotless bride Of Truth, Loyola's flashing blade descends Upon the mailèd casque, and rends The stubborn visor, laying bare The serpent face that lurked in hiding there; With steady front against the swarming foe Manresa's knight rains down the deadly blow, As on the bloody field of Tours, Martel With thundering mace smote down the infidel! No carnal weapons wields he in his fight, For his a spiritual sword of light, Forged in the glowing smithies of the soul, By Love attempered and by Truth made whole; No carnage reddens his victorious way, He combats to give life and not to slay, And like the hero fabled to our youth, He smites giant Error to free the princess Truth. Still other conquests wait the black-robed knight, In other fields to wage the sacred fight: See Xavier come, a burning brand Of love to distant India's sun-scorched strand, And as a flame consumed by its own fire His wasted frame in ardent love expire: Beneath our skies behold Loyola's band, When pagan night yet palled the distant land, With martyr toil the savage waste explore From distant Maine to far Pacific's shore, Christ in the heart and crucifix in hand: No terrors daunt, no lawless wild appals Where love of souls the saintly hero calls, But onward through the trackless waste before, His fearless steps first tread the virgin sod, And consecrate a new-found world to God! VII These, O Alma Mater, are thy bays, Thy coronal of praise, Wherewith thy hundred years are crowned; These the morning stars that rise To fill with golden light the skies That circle thy first cycle round; These the immortal fires that know No setting in heaven's wide expanse, But kindle with an ever brighter glow As years in crystal floods advance: We who stand upon the shore, And watch the impetuous flow Of time's river onward pour Into the future's formless sea, Dimly dream the glory yet to be; As in the gateways of the morn, When the waning stars are shorn Of their soft splendours, day is born, And the shimmering east grows white With the upward creeping light Against the westward flying night, We divine the glory still concealed By the beauty half revealed. Thy hundred years upon thy cheek Glowing with perennial truth, Sit like the first flush of youth; Nor envious Time may wreak His wrinkled vengeance on thy brow, And his harsh furrows plough To mark the rugged path Of his relentless wrath. And when our days have measured out their span To the last limit of the thread, And we join Death's wan caravan To the shoreless regions of the dead, His dread shade shall have no power To blight the blossom of the flower That wreathes thy head; But as the generations pass Like phantoms in Time's darkened glass, And ages in the ever-widening void go down, From their dust shall spring fresh bays to weave thy crown! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A SONG OF SIXPENCE by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN AMARANTHUS by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN ANARCHY by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN ASPIRATION by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN BENEDICTION by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN CARMEN NUPTIALE by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN CHRISTUS TRIUMPHANS: 1. MORS VICTOR by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN CHRISTUS TRIUMPHANS: 2. MORS VICTA by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN |
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