What were the glory of these festal days Shorn of their grand illumination's blaze? Night comes at last with all her starry train To find a light in every glittering pane. From "Harvard's" windows see the sudden flash,-- Old "Massachusetts" glares through every sash; From wall to wall the kindling splendors run Till all is glorious as the noonday sun. How to the scholar's mind each object brings What some historian tells, some poet sings! The good gray teacher whom we all revered-- Loved, honored, laughed at, and by freshmen feared, As from old "Harvard," where its light began, From hall to hall the clustering splendors ran-- Took down his well-worn Eschylus and read, Lit by the rays a thousand tapers shed, How the swift herald crossed the leagues between Mycenae's monarch and his faithless queen; And thus he read,--my verse but ill displays The Attic picture, clad in modern phrase. On Ida's summit flames the kindling pile, And Lemnos answers from his rocky isle; From Athos next it climbs the reddening skies, Thence where the watch-towers of Macistus rise. The sentries of Mesapius in their turn Bid the dry heath in high piled masses burn, Cithoeron's crag the crimson billows stain, Far AEgiplanctus joins the fiery train. Thus the swift courier through the pathless night Has gained at length the Arachnoean height, Whence the glad tidings, borne on wings offlame, "Ilium has fallen!" reach the royal dame. So ends the day; before the midnight stroke The lights expiring cloud the air with smoke; While these the toil of younger hands employ, The slumbering Grecian dreams of smouldering Troy. As to that hour with backward steps I turn, Midway I pause; behold a funeral urn! Ah, sad memorial! known but all too well The tale which thus its golden letters tell: This dust, once breathing, changed its joyous life For toil and hunger, wounds and mortal strife; Love, friendship, learning's all prevailing charms, For the cold bivouac and the clash of arms. The cause of freedom won, a race enslaved Called back to manhood, and a nation saved, These sons of Harvard, falling ere their prime, Leave their proud memory to the coming time. While in their still retreats our scholars turn The mildewed pages of the past, to learn With endless labor of the sleepless brain What once has been and ne'er shall be again, We reap the harvest of their ceaseless toil And find a fragrance in their midnight oil. But let a purblind mortal dare the task The embryo future of itself to ask, The world reminds him, with a scornful laugh, That times have changed since Prospero broke his staff. Could all the wisdom of the schools foretell The dismal hour when Lisbon shook and fell, Or name the shuddering night that toppled down Our sister's pride, beneath whose mural crown Scarce had the scowl forgot its angry lines, When earth's blind prisoners fired their fatal mines?