MORITURI SALUTAMUS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 128, 15 October 1875, Page 6

MORITUR I SALUTAMUS.

Thi poet Henry W. Longfellow recently delivered a poem fit Bowdoin College, on the occasion of tlio fiftieth anniversary of the class of 1825, to which lie belonged. We publish parts of it : —

As he who puts it off, the battle done. Study yourselves ; and most of all note well Wherein kind nature meant you. to excel, Not every blossom ripens into fruit. Write on your doois, the saying wise and old, "Be bold !be bold ! and everywhere be bold; But not too bold \" Tet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less; Better like Hector in the field to die, Than like a perfumed Paris turn and. fly. Ah me ! the fifty years since last we met Seem to me fifty folios bound and set By Time, the great transcriber, on his shelves, Wherein are writ the histories of ourselves. What tragedies, what comedies are there ; What joy and grief, what rapture and despair ! What chronicles of triumph and defeat, What records of regret, and doubts, and fears ! What pages blotted, blistered by our tears ! What lovely landscapes on the margin shine, What sweet, angelic faces, what divine And holy images of love and trust, Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust ! Whose hand shall dare to open., and explore These volumes, closed and clasped for evermore ? Not mine. With reverential feet I pass ; I hear a voice that cries, " Alas ! alas ! Whatever hath been written shall remain, Nor be erased, noi 1 written o'er again; The unwritten only still belongs to thee, Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be." As children frightened by a thunder cloud Are reassured if some one reads akmd A tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught, Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought, Let me endeavour with a tale to chase The gathering shadows of the time and place, And banish what we all too deeply feel Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal. r * *• ifi H The writer of this legend then records Its ghostly application in these words :—: — The image of the Adversary old, Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold ; Our lusts and passions are the downward stair That leads the soul from a diviner air ; The archer, Death ; the flaming jewel, Life ; Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife ; The knights and ladies, all "vrliose flesh and bone By avarice have been hardened into stone ; The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf Tempts from his books and from his nobler self, The scholar and the world ! The endless strife, The discord in the harmonies of life ! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books ; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain ! But why, you ask me, should this tale be told To men grown old, or who are growing old ? It is too late ! Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart ceases to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty ; Sophocles Wrote his grand (Edipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than fourscore years. And Thcophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men. Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingale, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales ; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed FausL when eighty years were past. These are indeed exceptions ; but they show How far the gulf -stream of your youth may flow Into the arctic regions of our lives, Where little else than life itself survives. Whatever poet, orator, or sage l^i-iy say of it, old age is still old age. it i-s thj "waning, not the crt-scdiit moon, 'i1!i 1 ! c du^k of evening, not the blaza of noon ; I) 1-3 nob strength, but weakness; not desire But its surcease; not the fierce I'eat of firo, The burning and and consuming clement, iJut Ih.it oi ashes and of embers spent, In -which some living sparks we still discern, jvaoi «h to warm, but not enough to burn. "Wh-it then ? Shall v.*o sit UVj down and say To my/it hath come ; it is no longer day ? The nig'it hath not yet come ; we are not quito CiiL 0.l i to vi labor by the failing light ; Something remains ±or us to do or dare ; Even the oldest tree .souie fruit may bear; Not (Euipus Culoueus, or Greek Ode, Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode Out ul the gateway of the Tabard Inn, But other something-, would lie but begin ; For age is opportunity no loss Than use itself, though hi another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The „ky ii tilled <ritb stsrs. Invisible by day,