Morituri Salutamus - Poem For The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Class Of 1825 In Bowdoin College Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Morituri Salutamus - Poem For The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Class Of 1825 In Bowdoin College Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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Tempora labuntur tacitisque senescimus annis	A
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies OVID Fastorum Lib vi	B
	-
	-
O Caesar we who are about to die	B
Salute you was the gladiators' cry	B
In the arena standing face to face	C
With death and with the Roman populace	D
	-
O ye familiar scenes ye groves of pine	E
That once were mine and are no longer mine	E
Thou river widening through the meadows green	F
To the vast sea so near and yet unseen	F
Ye halls in whose seclusion and repose	G
Phantoms of fame like exhalations rose	G
And vanished we who are about to die	B
Salute you earth and air and sea and sky	B
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down	H
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town	H
	-
Ye do not answer us ye do not hear	I
We are forgotten and in your austere	J
And calm indifference ye little care	K
Whether we come or go or whence or where	K
What passing generations fill these halls	L
What passing voices echo front these walls	L
Ye heed not we are only as the blast	M
A moment heard and then forever past	M
	-
Not so the teachers who in earlier days	N
Led our bewildered feet through learning's maze	N
They answer us alas what have I said	O
What greetings come there from the voiceless dead	O
What salutation welcome or reply	B
What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie	B
They are no longer here they all are gone	P
Into the land of shadows all save one	Q
Honor and reverence and the good repute	R
That follows faithful service as its fruit	R
Be unto him whom living we salute	R
	-
The great Italian poet when he made	S
His dreadful journey to the realms of shade	S
Met there the old instructor of his youth	T
And cried in tones of pity and of ruth	T
O never from the memory of my heart	U
Your dear paternal image shall depart	U
Who while on earth ere yet by death surprised	V
Taught me how mortals are immortalized	V
How grateful am I for that patient care	K
All my life long my language shall declare	K
	-
To day we make the poet's words our own	W
And utter them in plaintive undertone	W
Nor to the living only be they said	O
But to the other living called the dead	O
Whose dear paternal images appear	J
Not wrapped in gloom but robed in sunshine here	I
Whose simple lives complete and without flaw	X
Were part and parcel of great Nature's law	X
Who said not to their Lord as if afraid	S
Here is thy talent in a napkin laid	S
But labored in their sphere as men who live	Y
In the delight that work alone can give	Z
Peace be to them eternal peace and rest	A2
And the fulfilment of the great behest	A2
Ye have been faithful over a few things	B2
Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings	B2
	-
And ye who fill the places we once filled	C2
And follow in the furrows that we tilled	C2
Young men whose generous hearts are beating high	B
We who are old and are about to die	B
Salute you hail you take your hands in ours	D2
And crown you with our welcome as with flowers	D2
How beautiful is youth how bright it gleams	E2
With its illusions aspirations dreams	E2
Book of Beginnings Story without End	C2
Each maid a heroine and each man a friend	C2
Aladdin's Lamp and Fortunatus' Purse	F2
That holds the treasures of the universe	F2
All possibilities are in its hands	G2
No danger daunts it and no foe withstands	G2
In its sublime audacity of faith	H2
Be thou removed it to the mountain saith	H2
And with ambitious feet secure and proud	C2
Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud	C2
	-
As ancient Priam at the Scaean gate	C2
Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state	C2
With the old men too old and weak to fight	C2
Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight	C2
To see the embattled hosts with spear and shield	C2
Of Trojans and Achaians in the field	C2
So from the snowy summits of our years	I2
We see you in the plain as each appears	I2
And question of you asking Who is he	J2
That towers above the others Which may be	J2
Atreides Menelaus Odysseus	D
Ajax the great or bold Idomeneus	D
	-
Let him not boast who puts his armor on	K2
As he who puts it off the battle done	Q
Study yourselves and most of all note well	L2
Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel	L2
Not every blossom ripens into fruit	C2
Minerva the inventress of the flute	C2
Flung it aside when she her face surveyed	C2
Distorted in a fountain as she played	C2
The unlucky Marsyas found it and his fate	C2
Was one to make the bravest hesitate	C2
	-
Write on your doors the saying wise and old	C2
Be bold be bold and everywhere Be bold	C2
Be not too bold Yet better the excess	D
Than the defect better the more than less	D
Better like Hector in the field to die	B
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly	B
	-
And now my classmates ye remaining few	M2
That number not the half of those we knew	M2
Ye against whose familiar names not yet	C2
The fatal asterisk of death is set	C2
Ye I salute The horologe of Time	N2
Strikes the half century with a solemn chime	N2
And summons us together once again	O2
The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain	P2
	-
Where are the others Voices from the deep	Q2
Caverns of darkness answer me They sleep	Q2
I name no names instinctively I feel	R2
Each at some well remembered grave will kneel	R2
And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss	D
For every heart best knoweth its own loss	D
I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white	C2
Through the pale dusk of the impending night	C2
O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws	D
Its golden lilies mingled with the rose	D
We give to each a tender thought and pass	D
Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass	D
Unto these scenes frequented by our feet	C2
When we were young and life was fresh and sweet	C2
	-
What shall I say to you What can I say	D
Better than silence is When I survey	D
This throng of faces turned to meet my own	W
Friendly and fair and yet to me unknown	W
Transformed the very landscape seems to be	J2
It is the same yet not the same to me	J2
So many memories crowd upon my brain	P2
So many ghosts are in the wooded plain	P2
I fain would steal away with noiseless tread	C2
As from a house where some one lieth dead	C2
I cannot go I pause I hesitate	C2
My feet reluctant linger at the gate	C2
As one who struggles in a troubled dream	S2
To speak and cannot to myself I seem	S2
	-
Vanish the dream Vanish the idle fears	D
Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years	D
Whatever time or space may intervene	F
I will not be a stranger in this scene	F
Here every doubt all indecision ends	D
Hail my companions comrades classmates friends	D
	-
Ah me the fifty years since last we met	C2
Seem to me fifty folios bound and set	C2
By Time the great transcriber on his shelves	D
Wherein are written the histories of ourselves	D
What tragedies what comedies are there	K
What joy and grief what rapture and despair	K
What chronicles of triumph and defeat	C2
Of struggle and temptation and retreat	C2
What records of regrets and doubts and fears	D
What pages blotted blistered by our tears	D
What lovely landscapes on the margin shine	E
What sweet angelic faces what divine	E
And holy images of love and trust	C2
Undimmed by age unsoiled by damp or dust	C2
	-
Whose hand shall dare to open and explore	T2
These volumes closed and clasped forevermore	T2
Not mine With reverential feet I pass	D
I hear a voice that cries Alas alas	D
Whatever hath been written shall remain	P2
Nor be erased nor written o'er again	O2
The unwritten only still belongs to thee	J2
Take heed and ponder well what that shall be	J2
	-
As children frightened by a thundercloud	C2
Are reassured if some one reads aloud	C2
A tale of wonder with enchantment fraught	C2
Or wild adventure that diverts their thought	C2
Let me endeavor with a tale to chase	D
The gathering shadows of the time and place	D
And banish what we all too deeply feel	R2
Wholly to say or wholly to conceal	R2
	-
In mediaeval Rome I know not where	T2
There stood an image with its arm in air	T2
And on its lifted finger shining clear	T2
A golden ring with the device Strike here	T2
Greatly the people wondered though none guessed	C2
The meaning that these words but half expressed	C2
Until a learned clerk who at noonday	C2
With downcast eyes was passing on his way	D
Paused and observed the spot and marked it well	L2
Whereon the shadow of the finger fell	L2
And coming back at midnight delved and found	C2
A secret stairway leading under ground	C2
Down this he passed into a spacious hall	U2
Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall	U2
And opposite in threatening attitude	C2
With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood	C2
Upon its forehead like a coronet	C2
Were these mysterious words of menace set	C2
That which I am I am my fatal aim	V2
None can escape not even yon luminous flame	V2
	-
Midway the hall was a fair table placed	C2
With cloth of gold and golden cups enchased	C2
With rubies and the plates and knives were gold	C2
And gold the bread and viands manifold	C2
Around it silent motionless and sad	C2
Were seated gallant knights in armor clad	C2
And ladies beautiful with plume and zone	W
But they were stone their hearts within were stone	W
And the vast hall was filled in every part	C2
With silent crowds stony in face and heart	C2
	-
Long at the scene bewildered and amazed	C2
The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed	C2
Then from the table by his greed made bold	C2
He seized a goblet and a knife of gold	C2
And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang	B
The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang	B
The archer sped his arrow at their call	U2
Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall	U2
And all was dark around and overhead	C2
Stark on the door the luckless clerk lay dead	C2
	-
The writer of this legend then records	D
Its ghostly application in these words	D
The image is the Adversary old	C2
Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold	C2
Our lusts and passions are the downward stair	T2
That leads the soul from a diviner air	T2
The archer Death the flaming jewel Life	W2
Terrestrial goods the goblet and the knife	W2
The knights and ladies all whose flesh and bone	W
By avarice have been hardened into stone	W
The clerk the scholar whom the love of pelf	W2
Tempts from his books and from his nobler self	W2
	-
The scholar and the world The endless strife	W2
The discord in the harmonies of life	W2
The love of learning the sequestered nooks	D
And all the sweet serenity of books	D
The market place the eager love of gain	P2
Whose aim is vanity and whose end is pain	P2
	-
But why you ask me should this tale be told	C2
To men grown old or who are growing old	C2
It is too late Ah nothing is too late	C2
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate	C2
Cato learned Greek at eighty Sophocles	D
Wrote his grand Oedipus and Simonides	D
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers	D
When each had numbered more than fourscore years	D
And Theophrastus at fourscore and ten	O2
Had but begun his Characters of Men	O2
Chaucer at Woodstock with the nightingales	D
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales	D
Goethe at Weimar toiling to the last	C2
Completed Faust when eighty years were past	C2
These are indeed exceptions but they show	X2
How far the gulf stream of our youth may flow	X2
Into the arctic regions of our lives	D
Where little else than life itself survives	D
	-
As the barometer foretells the storm	Y2
While still the skies are clear the weather warm	Y2
So something in us as old age draws near	T2
Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere	T2
The nimble mercury ere we are aware	T2
Descends the elastic ladder of the air	T2
The telltale blood in artery and vein	P2
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain	P2
Whatever poet orator or sage	Z2
May say of it old age is still old age	Z2
It is the waning not the crescent moon	A3
The dusk of evening not the blaze of noon	A3
It is not strength but weakness not desire	T2
But its surcease not the fierce heat of fire	T2
The burning and consuming element	C2
But that of ashes and of embers spent	C2
In which some living sparks we still discern	B3
Enough to warm but not enough to burn	B3
	-
What then Shall we sit idly down and say	D
The night hath come it is no longer day	D
The night hath not yet come we are not quite	C2
Cut off from labor by the failing light	C2
Something remains for us to do or dare	T2
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear	T2
Not Oedipus Coloneus or Greek Ode	C2
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode	C2
Out of the gateway of the Tabard inn	C3
But other something would we but begin	C3
For age is opportunity no less	D
Than youth itself though in another dress	D
And as the evening twilight fades away	D
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day	D