As usual, compassion followed anger. “Pardon,” written a few days later, after the death of Wilkes Booth, is the better poem of the two. PARDON WILKES BOOTH--APRIL 26, 1865 Pains the sharp sentence the heart in whose wrath it was uttered, Now thou art cold; Vengeance, the headlong, and Justice, with purpose close muttered, Loosen their hold. Death brings atonement; he did that whereof ye accuse him,-- Murder accurst; But, from that crisis of crime in which Satan did lose him, Suffered the worst. Back to the cross, where the Saviour uplifted in dying Bade all souls live, Turns the reft bosom of Nature, his mother, low sighing, Greatest, forgive! On July 21, 1865, Harvard University held memorial exercises in honor of her sons who had given their lives for their country. The living graduates of that day numbered only twenty-four hundred, including the aged, sick, and absent. Of these more than five hundred went out to fight in behalf of the Union, many of them to return no more. Their names may be seen engraved on the marble tablets of Memorial Hall, Cambridge, a daily lesson in patriotism to the undergraduates who frequent it. Full of fun and nonsense as the latter are, they will permit no disrespect to the memory of the heroes of the Civil War. If visitors enter without removing their hats, an instant clamor arises, forcing them to do so. On this Commencement day of 1865 a notable assemblage gathered at Harvard. In addition to other distinguished people there were present, as Governor Andrew said in his address, a “cloud of living witnesses who have come back laden with glory from the fields where their comrades fell.” Phillips Brooks made a prayer, Ralph Waldo Emerson and others spoke. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rev. Charles T. Brooks, James Russell Lowell, his brother Robert, John S. Dwight, and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe contributed poems. The verses of the latter were read by her friend, Mr. Samuel Eliot. The opening ones are as follows: RETURN They are coming, oh my Brothers, they are coming! From the formless distance creeps the growing sound, Like a rill-fed forest, in whose rapid summing, Stream doth follow stream, till waves of joy abound. These have languished in the shadow of the prison, Long with hunger pains and bitter fever low; Welcome back our lost, from living graves arisen, From the wild despite and malice of the foe. Another of her war poems speaks in the name of the sons of the old university. When it was published in the newspapers, a careless typesetter made some errors in setting it up. I remember how troubled she was when the line O give them back, thou bloody breast of Treason-- was printed “beast” of Treason. We give a single verse of the “Harvard Student’s Song”: