POEMS OF OCCASION
Here let your Academe
Be no ignoble dream,
But, consecrate with life and death and song,
Through the land's spaces spread
The trust inherited,
The hope which from your hands shall take no wrong,
And build an altar that may last
Till heads now young be laurelled with the Past.
"UBI SUNT QUI ANTE NOS?"
Read at the Semi-Centennial Meeting of the Century Association, January 13, 1897
How now are the Others faring? Where sit They all in state?
And is there a token that somewhere, beyond the muffled gate,
The vanished and unreturning, whose names our memories fill,
Are holding their upper conclave and are of the Century still?
Is it all a fancy that somewhere, that somehow, the mindful Dead,
From the first that made his exit to the latest kinsman sped,—
Their vision ourselves unnoting, their shapes by ourselves unseen,—
Have gathered like us, together this night in that strange demesne?
That the astral world's telepathy along their aisles of light
Has summoned our brave immortals, this selfsame mortal night,
All in that rare existence where thoughts a substance are,
To their native planet's aura, from journeyings near and far;
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