A Poem Pronounced Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 28, 1845

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Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1845 - 36 pages

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Page 34 - Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings ! ye, With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul To make these felt and feeling, well may be Things that have made me watchful ; the far roll Of your departing voices is the knoll Of what in me is sleepless, — if I rest. But where of ye, O tempests ! is the goal ? Are ye like those within the human breast ? Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest...
Page 35 - A friendless warfare ! lingering long Through weary day and weary year. A wild and many-weaponed throng Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear. Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, And blench not at thy chosen lot. The timid good may stand aloof, The sage may frown — yet faint thou not.
Page 35 - Upon the soil they fought to save. Now all is calm, and fresh, and still, Alone the chirp of flitting bird, And talk of children on the hill, And bell of wandering kine are heard. No solemn host goes trailing by The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain; Men start not at the battle-cry; Oh, be it never heard again!
Page 35 - Yes, fellow-students, if our college had done nothing else than educate Samuel Adams, who in 1743, on taking his second degree maintained the thesis, that it is lawful to resist the chief magistrate, if -the State cannot otherwise be preserved ; — or James Otis, who by his argument on Writs of Assistance, in the words of one : well authorized to express an opinion, ' first breathed the breath of life into the cause of American freedom...
Page 34 - Oh yes! in future days our western lyres, Tuned to new themes, shall glow with purer fires, Clothed with the charms, to grace their later rhyme, Of every former age and foreign clime. Then Homer's arms shall ring in Bunker's shock, And Virgil's wanderer land on Plymouth rock; • Then Dante's knights before Quebec shall fall, And Charles's trump on trainband chieftains call. Our mobs shall wear the wreaths of Tasso's Moors, And Barbar.y's coast shall yield to Baltimore's.
Page 35 - American freedom'; — or John Hancock, the tion. patriot merchant, who offered his fortune a sacrifice to the country, and placed his name first to the Declaration of her Independence; — or John Adams, ' the colossus who sustained the Declaration in debate'; — or Josiah Quincy (your honored father, Mr. President), who, in 1774, wrote to his countrymen from London, 'that they must seal their testimony with their blood...
Page 2 - BROWN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. BOSTON: PRINTED BY FREEMAN AND BOLLES, WASHINGTON STREET.
Page 33 - Circumstances give color to the conjecture, that this took place during the Presidency of Increase Mather, when a violent struggle was making to secure the College under the influences of the old established Congregational church. At this time, there is reason to believe, that, mode in which they inscribed the motto on the College Arms, that no one human book contains the whole truth of any subject; and that, in order to get at the real end of any matter, we must be careful to look at both, ndet."...
Page 33 - But there is, I must confess, Sir, something a little less simple in the manner in which they placed the several letters of which this word is composed, upon the different quarters of the College arms. The first four letters, were inscribed on the inside of two open volumes ; the last three letters, on the outside of a third volume. Happening during my morning duties to overhear some friends in my vicinity questioning the meaning of this mystical disposition of the word Truth, I have been endeavouring...
Page 34 - Still, he thought, something might be done byand-by, even with materials so rough: "Oh yes! in future days our western lyres, Tuned to new themes, shall glow with purer fires, Clothed with the charms, to grace their later rhyme, Of every former age and foreign clime. Then Homer's arms shall ring in Bunker's shock, And Virgil's wanderer land on Plymouth rock; • Then Dante's knights before Quebec shall fall, And Charles's trump on trainband chieftains call.

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