Within the camp they lie, in dreams are freed From the grim discipline they learn to love; In dreams no more the sentry's challenge heed, In dreams afar beyond their pickets rove; One treads once more the piny paths that lead To his green mountain home, and pausing hears The cattle call; one treads the tangled weed Of slippery rocks beside Atlantic piers; One smiles in sleep, one wakens wet with tears. VII One scents the breath of jasmine flowers that twine The pillared porches of his Southern home; One hears the coo of pigeons in the pine Of Western woods where he was wont to roam; One sees the sunset fire the distant line Where the long prairie sweeps its levels down; One treads the snow-peaks; one by lamps that shine Down the broad highways of the sea-girt town; And two are missing,--Cadets Grey and Brown! VIII Much as I grieve to chronicle the fact, That selfsame truant known as "Cadet Grey" Was the young hero of our moral tract, Shorn of his twofold names on entrance-day. "Winthrop" and "Adams" dropped in that one act Of martial curtness, and the roll-call thinned Of his ancestors, he with youthful tact Indulgence claimed, since Winthrop no more sinned, Nor sainted Adams winced when he, plain Grey, was "skinned." IX He had known trials since we saw him last, By sheer good luck had just escaped rejection, Not for his learning, but that it was cast In a spare frame scarce fit for drill inspection; But when he ope'd his lips a stream so vast Of information flooded each professor, They quite forgot his eyeglass,--something past All precedent,--accepting the transgressor, Weak eyes and all of which he was possessor. X E'en the first day he touched a blackboard's space-- So the tradition of his glory lingers-- Two wise professors fainted, each with face White as the chalk within his rapid fingers: All day he ciphered, at such frantic pace, His form was hid in chalk precipitation Of every problem, till they said his case Could meet from them no fair examination Till Congress made a new appropriation. XI Famous in molecules, he demonstrated From the mess hash to many a listening classful; Great as a botanist, he separated Three kinds of "Mentha" in one julep's glassful; High in astronomy, it has been stated He was the first at West Point to discover Mars' missing satellites, and calculated Their true positions, not the heavens over, But 'neath the window of Miss Kitty Rover. XII