Under College Elms
Stretched under the spreading branches of this noble elm, which has
seen so many college generations come and go, I have well-nigh
forgotten that life has any limitations of space or time; work,
anxiety, weariness fade out of thought under a heaven from which every
cloud has vanished, and the eye pierces everywhere the infinite depths
of the upper firmament. Days are not always radiant here, and the
stream of life as it flows through this tranquil valley is flecked with
shadows; but all sweet influences have combined to touch this passing
hour with unspeakable peace. Here are the old familiar footpaths
trodden so often with hurrying feet in other years; here are the
well-worn seats about which familiar groups have so often gathered and
sent the echoes of their songs flying heavenward; here are the rooms
which will never lose the sense of home because of those who have lived
in them. The chapel bell tolls as of old, and the crowd comes hurrying
along like the generations before them, but the eye sees no familiar
faces among them. It is a place of intense and rich living, and yet
to-day, and for me, it is a place of memory. The life once lived here
is as truly finished as if eternity had placed the impassable gulf
between it and this quiet hour. These are the shores through which the
river once passed, these the green fields which encircled it, these the
mountains which flung their shadows over it, but the river itself has
swept leagues onward.
Mr. Higginson has written charmingly about "An Old Latin Text-Book,"
and there is surely something magical in the power with which these
well-worn volumes lay their spell upon us, and carry us back to other
scenes and men. I have a copy of Virgil from which all manner of
old-time things slip out as I open its pages. The eager enthusiasm of
the first dawning appreciation of the undying beauty of the old poet,
faintly discerned in the language which embalms it, comes back like a
whiff of fragrance from some by-gone summer. The potency of college
memories lies in the fact that in those years we made the most
memorable discoveries of our lives; the unknown river may widen and
deepen beyond our thought, but the most noteworthy moment in all our
wanderings with it will always be the moment when we first came upon
it, and there dawned upon us the sense of something new and great. To
most boys this rich and never-to-be-forgotten experience comes in
college. Except in cases of rare good fortune, a boy is not ripe for
the literary spirit in the classic literature until the college
atmosphere surrounds him. To many it never discovers itself at all,
and the languages which were dead at the beginning of study are dead at
the end; but to those in whom the instinct of scholarship is developed
there comes a day when Virgil lives as truly as he lived in Dante's
imagination, and, like Boccaccio, they light a fire at his tomb which
years do not quench.
Who that has ever gone through the experience will forget the hour when
he discovered the Greeks in Homer's pages, and felt for the first time
the grand impulse of that noble race stir his blood and fill his brain
with the far-reaching aspiration for a life as rich as theirs in
beauty, freedom, and strength! It is told of an English scholar that
he devoted his winters to the "Iliad" and his summers to the "Odyssey,"
reading each several times every year. One could hardly reconcile such
self-indulgence with the claims of to-day on every man's time and
strength; but I have no doubt all Grecians have a secret envy for such
a career. The Old-World charm of the "Odyssey" is one of the priceless
possessions of every fresh student, and to feel it for the first time
is like discovering the sea anew. It is, indeed, the Epic of the Sea;
the only poem in all literature which gives the breadth, the movement,
the mighty sweep of sky belted with stars, the unspeakable splendours
of sunrise and sunset,--the grand, free life of the sea. I would place
the "Odyssey" in every collection of modern books for the tonic quality
that is in it. The dash of wave and the roar of wind play havoc with
our melancholy, and fill us with shame that we have so much as asked
the question, "Is Life Worth Living?"
There is no grander entrance gate to the great world of thought than
the Greek Literature. Universities are broadening their courses to
meet the multiplied demands of modern knowledge and to fit men for the
varied pursuits of modern life, but for those who desire familiarity
with human life in its broadest expression, and especially for those
who seek familiarity with the literary spirit and mastery of the
literary art, Greek must hold its place in the curriculum to the end of
time. This implies no disparagement of our own literature--a
literature which spreads its dome over a wider world of feeling and
knowledge than the Greek ever saw within the horizon of his experience;
but the Greek, like the Hebrew, will remain to the latest generation
among the great teachers of men. He was born into the first rank among
nations; he had an eye quick to see, a mind clear, open, and bold to
grasp facts, set them in order, and generalise their law; an instinct
for art that turned all his observation and thinking into literature.
Whether he looked at the world about him or fixed his gaze upon his own
nature, his insight was from the very beginning so direct, so
commanding, so perfectly allied with beauty, that his speculations
became philosophy and his emotions poetry. There was hardly any aspect
of life which he did not see, no question which he did not ask, and few
which he failed to answer with more or less of truth. He walked
through an untrodden world of sights and sounds, and reproduced the
vast circle of his life in a literature to which men will look as long
as the world stands for models of sweetness, beauty, and power. Greek
literature holds its place, not because scholars have combined to keep
alive its traditions and make familiarity with it the bond of the
fellowship of culture, but because it is the faithful reflection of the
life of a race who faced the world on all sides with masterly
intelligence and power. It is a liberal education to have travelled
from Aeschylus, with his almost Asiatic splendour of imagination, to
Theocritus, under whose exquisite touch the soft outlines of Sicilian
life took on idyllic loveliness!
And then there were those unbroken winter evenings, when one began
really to know the great modern masters of literature. What would one
not give to have them back again, with their undisturbed hours ending
only when the fire or the lamp gave out! Those were nights of royal
fellowships, of introduction into the noblest society the world has
ever known, and it is the recollection of this companionship which
gives those days under college roofs a unique and perennial charm.
Then first the spirit of our own race was revealed to us in Chaucer,
Shakespeare, and Milton; then first we thrilled to that music which has
never faltered since Caedmon found his voice in answer to the heavenly
vision. There are days which will always have a place by themselves in
our memory, nights whose stars have never set, because they brought us
face to face with some great soul, and struck into life in an instant
some new and mighty meaning. The ferment of soul which Hazlitt
describes on the night when he walked home from his first talk with
Coleridge is no exceptional experience; it comes to most young men who
are susceptible to the influence of great thoughts coming for the first
time into consciousness. A lonely country road comes into view as I
write these words, and over it the heavens bend with a new and
marvellous splendour, because the boy who walked along its winding
course had just finished for the first time, and in a perfect tumult of
soul, Schiller's "Robbers;" it was the power of a great master, felt
through his crudest work, that filled the night with such magical
influences.
The hours in which we come in contact with great souls are always
memorable in our history, often the crises in our intellectual life; it
is the recollection of such hours that gives those bending elms an
imperishable charm, and lends to this landscape a deathless interest.