Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/185

DARTMOUTH ODE Sent forth, the gentle scholar strode

At ease upon a royal road,

And found the outer regions all they seem

In Youth's prophetic dream.

The graduate took his station then

By right, a ruler among men:

Courtly the three estates, and sure;

The bar, the bench, the pulpit, pure;

No cosmic doubts arose, to vex

The preacher's heart, his faith perplex.

Content in ancient paths he trod,

Nor searched beyond his Book for God.

Great virtue lurked in many a saw

And in the doctor's Latin lay;

Men thought, lived, died, in the appointed way.

Yet eloquence was slave to law,

And law to right: the statesman sought

A patriot's fame, and served his land, unbought,

And bore erect his front, and held his oath in awe.

IV

ÆREA PROLES

, now, far other days

Have made less green the poet's bays,—

Have less revered the band and gown,

The grave physician's learnèd frown,—

Shaken the penitential mind

That read the text nor looked behind,—

Brought from his throne the bookman down,

Made hard the road to station and renown!

Now from this seclusion deep

The scholar wakes,—as one from sleep,

As one from sleep remote and sweet,

In some fragrant garden-close

Between the lily and the rose,

Roused by the tramp of many feet, 155