Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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TIIE CRY OF YYIE SOUL. 25 ancient mythologies have passed away. ' Great Pan is dead. As Mrs. Browning tells us : Earth outgrows the mythic fancies Sung beside her in her youthg And those debonaire romances Sound but dull beside the truth. Phuebus' chariot course is run, Look up, poets, to the sun! Pan, Pan is dead. Christ has sent us down the angelsg And the whole earth and the skies Are illumed by altar candles Lit for blessed mysteries: And a Priest's Hand through creation XVaveth calm and consecration- And Pan is dead. Truth is fair: should we forego it? Can we sigh right for a wrong? God Himself is the best Poet, And the Real is His song. Sing His truth out fair and full And secure His Beautiful. Let Pan be dead. U This world-light, with its joyousness and beauty and good cheer, is for the individual soul. It is as much for you and me as it is for the races and continents which it has delivered from the terrors of demon worship and the horrors of human sacrifice. If we are blind and God-forsaken it is because we are God-for- sakers, turning ourselves away from the light. What says Whittier, O Love Divine, whose constant beam Shines on the eyes that will not see, And waits to bless us while we dream, Thou leavest us because we turn from Thee ! All souls that struggle andaspire, All hearts of prayer by thee are litg And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st, Wide as our need thy favors fall: The white wings of the Holy Ghost Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the hearts of all.

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24 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. Finally, nothing can be more true to nature than is the revolt of the soul of our poet from the thought of nothingness. Even while he invokes and almost blasphemously challenges annihilation he falters and stammers out a possible altemative. Nothing- ness, or peace. Though he cannot understand how any way of peace can be possible, he has heard of it, and he has a blind and groping faith that such a thing may be. Here is the only ray of light in all this wretched threnody. Here light is possible and hope is possible, because unconscious faith half triumphs over the old habitual assumption that an understanding of spiritual experiences and of their factors must precede the experiences themselves. Such a half-gleam of the higher knowledge of the Spirit and of the Spirit's mysteries gives space and ground for hope. Whoever has so much as half a sigh for peace, for peace transcending human understanding, is a soul not yet in total alienation from the realm and reach of grace. And since there is this one small opening for the light of grace and for the healing and life-giving energies of grace, let us read this child of despair a poem in a new-found key and ask him if in its pleadings he cannot discover something of the sweetness, something of the yearning and the promise of the Nameless Voice : ' Gracious soul, to whom are given Holy hungerings after heaven, Restless breathings, earliest moans, Deep, unutterable groans, Turn again to God, thy rest, - jesus hath pronounced thee blestg Touched with sympathizing care, Thee hc in His arms shall bear, Bless with late but lasting peace, Fill with all His righteousness. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Graduating Classes :-The lessons of this theme and hour are many. Three only will we pause to notice. The first respects the life individual, the second the life academic, the third the life universal. First then, and foremost, let us never forget that whatsoever darkness of mind and soul may have rested upon early gener- ations, light has come into our world. The nightmare dreams of

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26 BOSTOA7 UAYVERSITY YEAR BOOK. ' Shine light df God! make broad thy scope To all who sin and sufferg-more And better than we dare to hope With Heavcn's compassions make our longings poor. What though in their turn griefs and affiictions fall to our lot? They need not darken life. Has not Holmes taught us a song for the night of pain? Will we not with him sing, O Love Divine, that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear! On thee we cast each earth-born carey XVe smile at pain while thou art near. Though long the weary way we tread, And sorrow crown each lingering year, No path we shun, no darkness dread, Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near! It may fall to us to be homeless Wanderers in the earth, but if we only possess the inner harmonies of Madame Guyon we shall often catch ourselves singing snatches from her sweet minstrelsy : My Lord, how full of sweet content, I pass my years of banishment ! lVhcre'cr I dwell, I dwell with Thee, In heaven, in earth, or on the sea, To me remains nor place nor timeg My country is in every clinic: 'I can be calm and free from care On any shore, since God is there. Believing in such a life- consciously sharing it-yet seeing the poisoned life of sinful men so full of gloom, and torturing self-reproach, and weltering weakness-remembering his own but recent escape out of a like condition of blindness and bitter blasphemy against self and God, and even God's mercy-how natural it was that St. Bernard of Clairvaux should sing, and in his singing pray: Oh, Jesus, ever with us stayg Make all our moments calm and brightg Chase the dark night of sin away, Shed o'er the world Thy holy light ! Our second lesson respects the life academic. It is that, other things being equal, in proportion as auniversity recognizes before