UBI SUNT QUI ANTE NOS
And that now with forms made over, and life as jocund and young
As when they here kept wassail and joined in the catches sung,
They have met in the ancient fashion, and now in the old-time speech
Are chanting their Vivat Centuria just out of our hearing's reach?
Yes, O yes,—as the pictured ghosts of Huns war on in middle air
With a fiercer battle-hunger from the field upflinging there,—
And since the things we have chosen from all, as most of worth
Forever here and hereafter, cease not with the end of Earth;
Since joy and knowledge and beauty, and the love of man to man
Passing the love of women, the links of our chain began,—
Yea, even as these are ceaseless, so they who were liegemen here
Hark back and are all Centurions this night of the fiftieth year!
Yes, the draftsmen and craftsmen have fashioned with a dream's compelling force
The Century's lordlier temple, have builded it course on course,
And a luminiferous ether floods the great assembly-hall
Where the scintillant "C. A." colophon burns high in the sight of all.
The painters have hung from end to end cloud-canvases ablaze
With that color-scheme from us hidden in the ultra-violet rays,
181
