Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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Yet there is loss. The splendid perfumed rose That blooms to-day within thy garden-close- Ah, like it is but is not yet the flower Thou wovest once in one fair maiden's hair To shed its perfume and its splendor there And crown 1ove's supreme hour. And though this rose as that be fair and sweet, Yea, though all rose-delights in this rose meet Too well, too well thou knowest it hath no power Save in a mocking vision to recall Youth's vanished festival. Ay, there is loss. Though rose return for rose, Somewhither each one goes Nor comes again in its own form and hueg And love that springs from dead love's urned repos Makes not the old joy new. Ah for this transitory human life, Where at the last all strivers cease from strife And over them and theirs is cast the spell Of death's Irrevocable J Where unto them that have so nobly striven For heaven's best boon, behold what boon is A little time of hopes and joys and fears, A little sound of music in their ears, A little light upon their eyes, and then Darkness again. Prayer shall avail not to avert this doom 3 For man and all that man's hand fashioneth Shall find within the wide domain of death An unremembered tomb. given But hold! The eyes of men, Made keen with penetrating through the veil Behind which matter hides it from our ken, Have found, past all doubt's mockery to assail, An immortality within the clod, I An essence that shall live unchallenged on Though the live light of sunlit heaven should fail And earth Wait vainly for one darkling dawn,- Perchance incarnate God. Pent in the silent caverns of the earth, Scarce stirred since the World's birth, L, Or brought where ,the rains nourish, the sun warms, To gather vigor of the sun and rains And pass through thousand Proteau forms Of blade and blossom, stone and beast and tree And man's supremacy, Through change unchanged this essence still remains D D I5

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memorial Ode. Ulead at the Founders' Day exercises, March 9, 1894.l 0 LIFE is lost, one says g no 1I13.I1,S work dies Utterly 3 none that looks upon the skies But leaves some record as secure as they From death and death's decay. Lo, this is fate. Put forth thy strong hand where Men labor in Tin1e's garden-plot to-day : Eternity shall find the impress there. And haply this may be. But one says, Nay, there is naught that abides. Time is a wide, unfathomable sea 'Neath whose recurrent tides Are swallowed up all things implacably. This rock-built earth whereof man makes his home Is less than the sea's foam 3 The galaxies of stars that seem to hini Perdurable as tinie, like bubbles swim Upon its surface and like them will burst 5 Yea, time itself, that swallows up all these, Must yield in turn, the last lost as the first,- Must sink whence it arose, Flow backward whence it Hows, Into eternity's soundless, shoreless seas. XVhat may be true? Is life less full or fair, Does deeper darkness gather o'er n1en's eyes, Tlian when our fathers importuned the skies For light withholden there? The sun shines warm to-day as yesterday, The green grass fails not when the rains return, And ivy twines about the burial urn, And stnnnier winds through leafiess branches play. llearken by day, by night, and thou inayst hear Ascending ever one unchanging tune, The voice of all earth's choristers a croon The world song low and clear No age hath listened for this song in vain And Homer calls and Shakespeare answers Here ' -tml loss is balanced by unfaihng gain ' 1 A' r i ' ' D ' . . 1 . , Though one voice dies another swells the strain, ' A 1 , . T4

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The essence? Are the forms abolished then ? Not so : these too abide, As in the ocean's tide .-Xbides forever the high curling crest, Though iilled with all unrest And molding crestwise ever and again New waters gathered in its wanderings wide t'pon the ocean's breast. Nay, not the clod alone, The gross, dense inatter whereof worlds are made, Hath life beyond this life of light and shade. The form it clothes is deathless as God's own And was not born to fade. XVh:1t hand so cunning can destroy one line Of t3od's deep-wrought design ? Shatter the dewdrop globed upon the grass 1 The fragile globule flies To thousand 3lOlI1lCS1 Yet each retains the outline of the mass, .-Rnd sphertd perfection lies. Ur loose ri feathered arrow front its place I Thy straightening bow forgets its bendecl grace 3 hut upward turn thine eye .find mark against the sky Thy flying shaft the bow of beauty trace. The fair proportions of the Parthenon Vntouched by time live on. The Colosseunfs springing arches spread Above thy reverent head. XVII Their paths appointed :ind their contours keep. What though men die? Espied or unespierl, I Sonievvhere their forms abide. E For The XX'e moan, .Ynl licrzx' 1V0l!1crc! somewhere, we though thou tread from us where death unbars way, 'x'u'llllflf3'x's'i'Ilg thy dear face, and though In lines of iight outstreaming past the stars, Thy living lineainents glow. 16 :it though worlds perish ? Other worlds shall sweep know