Advertisement

Crimson Reprints 1937 Poem And Ode from Album Out Today

CLASS POEM

New England's green stirs from its Winter sleep And spreads its lawns and ivies everywhere;

The elms, the oaks, and maples rise and keep Their murmuring boughs above the land they share.

Once more the winds with Summer's warmth are crowned, And songs come from the shadows in the trees;

Again the shells of time send forth their sound As youth goes by on wings of wayward breeze.

How dear that pale September night when we Had paused beneath McKean Gate to gaze

Advertisement

Into the Yard's low-branching canopy: What was that Lydian chord whose note still plays?

Day after day our Freshman year seemed long, Our April found the Winter in a trance,

And yet that June our Spring had seemed to throng Until the year was just a backward glance.

And O how short four College years have been: There cloistered years too soon have gone their way

And left their music as the mind's mute din To swell upon occasions as today:

Bear witness, Harvard, your immortal name

Has seen three centuries inscribe your fame

Within the chart of time whose sweep of years

Has left untouched the fringe of your frontiers;

Like tides of mortal seas, the flowing stream

Advertisement