AN ASPIRATION by EDWARD ROWLAND SILL

LET us return once more, we said,
And greet the saintly mother Yale;
That gray and venerable head,
That wrinkled brow, time-worn and pale.

So from afar we fared, and found
Her children thronging round her feet:
The summer all her elms had crowned,
The dappled grass was cool and sweet.

But lo! no ancient dame was there,
With tottering step and waning powers:
Our maiden mother, fresh and fair,
Stood queenlike 'mid her trees and towers.

Men may grow old: Time's tremulous hands
Still hasten the spent glass; but she --
"Mewing her mighty youth" she stands,
And wears her laurels royally.

From olden fountain-wells that flow
Down every sacred height of truth,
As pure as fire, as cold as snow,
Her lips have quaffed immortal youth.

Her feet in fields of amaranth tread,
Lilies of every golden clime
Are in her hand, and round her head
The aureole of the coming time.

Ah, maiden-mother, might there rise
On these far shores a power like thine,
With Learning's sceptre, mild and wise,
And all the sister Arts benign!

It matters little that it bear
The name that Cloyne's great bishop bore,
If only it might bring the fair
Fulfillment of his thought of yore;

If somewhere, on the hill or plain,
By forest's calm, or quickening sea,
Or where the town's electric brain
With silent lightnings flashes free, --

If one like Yale among us stood,
To nourish at her ample breast
And feed with her ambrosial food
The infant vigor of the West.

The smitten rocks pour forth in vain
Their Midas-streams: when shall be wrought
From out our store some classic fane,
Some cloistered home of finer thought?

Ofttimes a troubled mood will bring
The vision of a land forlorn,
Where gold is prophet, priest, and king,
And wisdom is a name of scorn;

Whose treasures build the gambler's halls,
Whose tinsel follies flaunt the skies,
Whose horses feed in marble stalls,
While Learning begs for crumbs, and dies.

The waves that throb from Asia's breast
Prophetic murmur on our shore:
Barbarian throngs from East, from West --
Who knows what fortunes are in store?

Nay, thou foreboding mood, be still!
And let a farther-sighted pen
Point out the better fate that Will
And Hope make possible to men.

What man has done, still man can do:
Of slumbering force there is no dearth;
And beckoning hands and hearts may woo
The banished Muses back to earth.

We, too, those fountain-wells have known,
And quaffed the life no years destroy;
And under every snowiest crown
Still dreams and yearns the immortal Boy.

Nor shall that yearning be in vain:
With boyish hope but manlier will
We dream our rosy dreams again,
And build our airy castles still.

But not of passion's luring wraith,
Nor selfish fancy's empty foam;
Of steadfast brother-love, in faith,
We build the better time to come.

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