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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of th</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis, <br>Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies. <br> Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi.<br> "O Cæsar, we who are about to die <br> Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry <br> In the arena, standing face to face <br> With death and with the Roman populace. <br> O ye familiar scenes,--ye groves of pine, <br> That once were mine and are no longer mine,-- <br> Thou river, widening through the meadows green <br> To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,-- <br> Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose <br> And vanished,--we who are about to die, <br> Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky, <br> And the Imperial Sun that scatters down <br> His sovereign splendors upon grove and town. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear! <br> We are forgotten; and in your austere <br> And calm indifference, ye little care <br> Whether we come or go, or whence or where. <br> What passing generations fill these halls, <br> What passing voices echo from these walls, <br> Ye heed not; we are only as the blast, <br> A moment heard, and then forever past. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Not so the teachers who in earlier days <br> Led our bewildered feet through learning's maze; <br> They answer us--alas! what have I said? <br> What greetings come there from the voiceless dead? <br> What salutation, welcome, or reply? <br> What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie? <br> They are no longer here; they all are gone <br> Into the land of shadows,--all save one. <br> Honor and reverence, and the good repute <br> That follows faithful service as its fruit, <br> Be unto him, whom living we salute. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The great Italian poet, when he made <br> His dreadful journey to the realms of shade, <br> Met there the old instructor of his youth, <br> And cried in tones of pity and of ruth: <br> "Oh, never from the memory of my heart </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Your dear, paternal image shall depart, <br> Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised, <br> Taught me how mortals are immortalized; <br> How grateful am I for that patient care <br> All my life long my language shall declare." </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> To-day we make the poet's words our own, <br> And utter them in plaintive undertone; <br> Nor to the living only be they said, <br> But to the other living called the dead, <br> Whose dear, paternal images appear <br> Not wrapped in gloom, but robed in sunshine here; <br> Whose simple lives, complete and without flaw, <br> Were part and parcel of great Nature's law; <br> Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid, <br> "Here is thy talent in a napkin laid," <br> But labored in their sphere, as men who live <br> In the delight that work alone can give. <br> Peace be to them; eternal peace and rest, <br> And the fulfilment of the great behest: <br> "Ye have been faithful over a few things, <br> Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings." </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And ye who fill the places we once filled, <br> And follow in the furrows that we tilled, <br> Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high, <br> We who are old, and are about to die, <br> Salute you; hail you; take your hands in ours, <br> And crown you with our welcome as with flowers! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams <br> With its illusions, aspirations, dreams! <br> Book of Beginnings, Story without End, <br> Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend! <br> Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse, <br> That holds the treasures of the universe! <br> All possibilities are in its hands, <br> No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands; <br> In its sublime audacity of faith, <br> "Be thou removed!" it to the mountain saith, <br> And with ambitious feet, secure and proud, <br> Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> As ancient Priam at the Scæan gate <br> Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state <br> With the old men, too old and weak to fight, <br> Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight <br> To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield, <br> Of Trojans and Achaians in the field; <br> So from the snowy summits of our years <br> We see you in the plain, as each appears, <br> And question of you; asking, "Who is he <br> That towers above the others? Which may be <br> Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus, <br> Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus?" </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Let him not boast who puts his armor on <br> As he who puts it off, the battle done. <br> Study yourselves; and most of all note well <br> Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel. <br> Not every blossom ripens into fruit; <br> Minerva, the inventress of the flute, <br> Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed <br> Distorted in a fountain as she played; <br> The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fate <br> Was one to make the bravest hesitate. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Write on your doors the saying wise and old, <br> "Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere, "Be bold; <br> Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess <br> Than the defect; better the more than less; <br> Better like Hector in the field to die, <br> Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> And now, my classmates; ye remaining few <br> That number not the half of those we knew, <br> Ye, against whose familiar names not yet <br> The fatal asterisk of death is set, <br> Ye I salute! The horologe of Time <br> Strikes the half-century with a solemn chime, <br> And summons us together once again, <br> The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Where are the others? Voices from the deep <br> Caverns of darkness answer me: "They sleep!" <br> I name no names; instinctively I feel <br> Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel, <br> And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss, <br> For every heart best knoweth its own loss. <br> I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white <br> Through the pale dusk of the impending night; <br> O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws <br> Its golden lilies mingled with the rose; <br> We give to each a tender thought, and pass <br> Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass, <br> Unto these scenes frequented by our feet <br> When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> What shall I say to you? What can I say <br> Better than silence is? When I survey <br> This throng of faces turned to meet my own, <br> Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown, <br> Transformed the very landscape seems to be; <br> It is the same, yet not the same to me. <br> So many memories crowd upon my brain, <br> So many ghosts are in the wooded plain, <br> I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread, <br> As from a house where some one lieth dead. <br> I cannot go;--I pause;--I hesitate; <br> My feet reluctant linger at the gate; <br> As one who struggles in a troubled dream <br> To speak and cannot, to myself I seem. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears! <br> Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years! <br> Whatever time or space may intervene, <br> I will not be a stranger in this scene. <br> Here every doubt, all indecision, ends; <br> Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Ah me! the fifty years since last we met <br> Seem to me fifty folios bound and set <br> By Time, the great transcriber, on his shelves, <br> Wherein are written the histories of ourselves. <br> What tragedies, what comedies, are there; <br> What joy and grief, what rapture and despair! <br> What chronicles of triumph and defeat, <br> Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat! <br> What records of regrets, and doubts, and fears! <br> What pages blotted, blistered by our tears! <br> What lovely landscapes on the margin shine, <br> What sweet, angelic faces, what divine <br> And holy images of love and trust, <br> Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust!<br> Whose hand shall dare to open and explore <br> These volumes, closed and clasped forevermore? <br> Not mine. With reverential feet I pass; <br> I hear a voice that cries, "Alas! alas! <br> Whatever hath been written shall remain, <br> Nor be erased nor written o'er again; <br> The unwritten only still belongs to thee: <br> Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be." </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> As children frightened by a thunder-cloud <br> Are reassured if some one reads aloud <br> A tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught, <br> Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought, <br> Let me endeavor with a tale to chase <br> The gathering shadows of the time and place, <br> And banish what we all too deeply feel <br> Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> In mediæval Rome, I know not where, <br> There stood an image with its arm in air, <br> And on its lifted finger, shining clear, <br> A golden ring with the device, "Strike here!" <br> Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed <br> The meaning that these words but half expressed, <br> Until a learned clerk, who at noonday <br> With downcast eyes was passing on his way, <br> Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well, <br> Whereon the shadow of the finger fell; <br> And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found <br> A secret stairway leading underground. <br> Down this he passed into a spacious hall, <br> Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall; <br> And opposite, in threatening attitude, <br> With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood. <br> Upon its forehead, like a coronet, <br> Were these mysterious words of menace set: <br> "That which I am, I am; my fatal aim <br> None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!" </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Midway the hall was a fair table placed, <br> With cloth of gold, and golden cups enchased <br> With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold, <br> And gold the bread and viands manifold. <br> Around it, silent, motionless, and sad, <br> Were seated gallant knights in armor clad, <br> And ladies beautiful with plume and zone, <br> But they were stone, their hearts within were stone; <br> And the vast hall was filled in every part <br> With silent crowds, stony in face and heart. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed <br> The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed; <br> Then from the table, by his greed made bold, <br> He seized a goblet and a knife of gold, <br> And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang, <br> The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang, <br> The archer sped his arrow, at their call, <br> Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall, <br> And all was dark around and overhead;-- <br> Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> The writer of this legend then records <br> Its ghostly application in these words: <br> The image is the Adversary old, <br> Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold; <br> Our lusts and passions are the downward stair <br> That leads the soul from a diviner air; <br> The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life; <br> Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife; <br> The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone <br> By avarice have been hardened into stone; <br> The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf <br> Tempts from his books and from his nobler self. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> The scholar and the world! The endless strife, <br> The discord in the harmonies of life! <br> The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, <br> And all the sweet serenity of books; <br> The market-place, the eager love of gain, <br> Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> But why, you ask me, should this tale be told <br> To men grown old, or who are growing old? <br> It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late <br> Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. <br> Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles <br> Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides <br> Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, <br> When each had numbered more than fourscore years, <br> And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, <br> Had but begun his "Characters of Men." <br> Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales, <br> At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; <br> Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, <br> Completed Faust when eighty years were past. <br> These are indeed exceptions; but they show <br> How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow <br> Into the arctic regions of our lives, <br> Where little else than life itself survives. <br> As the barometer foretells the storm <br> While still the skies are clear, the weather warm <br> So something in us, as old age draws near, <br> Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere. <br> The nimble mercury, ere we are aware, <br> Descends the elastic ladder of the air; <br> The telltale blood in artery and vein <br> Sinks from its higher levels in the brain; <br> Whatever poet, orator, or sage <br> May say of it, old age is still old age. <br> It is the waning, not the crescent moon; <br> The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon; <br> It is not strength, but weakness; not desire, <br> But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire, <br> The burning and consuming element, <br> But that of ashes and of embers spent, <br> In which some living sparks we still discern, <br> Enough to warm, but not enough to burn. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409541" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> What then? Shall we sit idly down and say <br> The night hath come; it is no longer day? <br> The night hath not yet come; we are not quite <br> Cut off from labor by the failing light; <br> Something remains for us to do or dare; <br> Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear; <br> Not Oedipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode, <br> Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode <br> Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn, <br> But other something, would we but begin; <br> For age is opportunity no less <br> Than youth itself, though in another dress, <br> And as the evening twilight fades away <br> The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</a></strong></div>