Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/211

UBI SUNT QUI ANTE NOS And that now with forms made over, and life as jocund and young

As when they here kept wassail and joined in the catches sung,

They have met in the ancient fashion, and now in the old-time speech

Are chanting their Vivat Centuria just out of our hearing's reach?

Yes, O yes,—as the pictured ghosts of Huns war on in middle air

With a fiercer battle-hunger from the field upflinging there,—

And since the things we have chosen from all, as most of worth

Forever here and hereafter, cease not with the end of Earth;

Since joy and knowledge and beauty, and the love of man to man

Passing the love of women, the links of our chain began,—

Yea, even as these are ceaseless, so they who were liegemen here

Hark back and are all Centurions this night of the fiftieth year!

Yes, the draftsmen and craftsmen have fashioned with a dream's compelling force

The Century's lordlier temple, have builded it course on course,

And a luminiferous ether floods the great assembly-hall

Where the scintillant "C. A." colophon burns high in the sight of all.

The painters have hung from end to end cloud-canvases ablaze

With that color-scheme from us hidden in the ultra-violet rays, 181