Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/166

POEMS OF OCCASION Round the old board, with talk and song and laughter,

Each unto each shall gossip of his lot;

Here at Life's noon we look before and after;

Glad let us be, then, nor sigh for what is not.

Peace to the Dead! the spoiler has bereft us;

Dear are their names when the red wine is poured!

Drain we the cup to every comrade left us,

Near ones and far ones, round the old board.



Yale, old Yale! the same old elms above us!

Comrades, are ye here, the mates that never fail?

Some have sought the skies, we know their spirits love us;

Some in far-off places are thinking of old Yale.

MERIDIAN

AN OLD-FASHIONED POEM

1853

I

tryst is kept. How fares it with each one

At this mid hour, when mariners take the sun

And cast their reckoning? when some level height

Is reached by men who set their strength aright,—

Who for a little space the firm plateau

Tread sure and steadfast, yet who needs must know

Full soon begins the inevitable slide

Down westward slopings of the steep divide.

How stands it, comrades, at this noontide fleet,

When for an hour we gather to the meet? 136