MATER CORONATA
II
The elements that buffet man decree
His lustihood prevailing to the end;
The free air foreordains him to be free;—
Their stern persistency
The ages to his resolute spirit lend.
III
So rose our Academe since that far day
When reverently the grave forefathers came,
In council by the shoal ancestral bay,
To speak the word,—to pray,—
To found the enduring shrine without a name.
IV
Ye, at the witchery of whose golden wand
New cloisters rise to splendor in a night,—
Find here your model! Here the barriers stand
That were not made to hand,
That have the puissance Time confers aright.
V
Born with the exit of that iron age
When Nova Anglia to New-England grew,
Learning's new child put up a hermitage,
Whereof no godly mage
As from a mount the boundaries foreknew;
VI
No oracle betokened the obscure
Grim years encountering which the elders bowed,
Yet knew not faintness nor discomfiture,
But set the buttress sure
That should upstay these tabernacles proud;
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