Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/210

POEMS OF OCCASION Here let your Academe

Be no ignoble dream,

But, consecrate with life and death and song,

Through the land's spaces spread

The trust inherited,

The hope which from your hands shall take no wrong,

And build an altar that may last

Till heads now young be laurelled with the Past.

"UBI SUNT QUI ANTE NOS?"

13, 1897

now are the Others faring? Where sit They all in state?

And is there a token that somewhere, beyond the muffled gate,

The vanished and unreturning, whose names our memories fill,

Are holding their upper conclave and are of the Century still?

Is it all a fancy that somewhere, that somehow, the mindful Dead,

From the first that made his exit to the latest kinsman sped,—

Their vision ourselves unnoting, their shapes by ourselves unseen,—

Have gathered like us, together this night in that strange demesne?

That the astral world's telepathy along their aisles of light

Has summoned our brave immortals, this selfsame mortal night,

All in that rare existence where thoughts a substance are,

To their native planet's aura, from journeyings near and far;

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