Stranger.

Let him not boast who puts his armor on 

As he who puts it off, the battle done. 

Study yourselves; and most of all note well 

Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel. 

Not every blossom ripens into fruit; 

Minerva, the inventress of the flute, 

Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed 

Distorted in a fountain as she played; 

The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fate 

Was one to make the bravest hesitate. 

Write on your doors the saying wise and old, 

"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere, "Be bold; 

Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess 

Than the defect; better the more than less; 

Better like Hector in the field to die, 

Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly. 

And now, my classmates; ye remaining few 

That number not the half of those we knew, 

Ye, against whose familiar names not yet 

The fatal asterisk of death is set, 

Ye I salute! The horologe of Time 

Strikes the half-century with a solemn chime, 

And summons us together once again, 

The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain. 

Where are the others? Voices from the deep 

Caverns of darkness answer me: "They sleep!" 

I name no names; instinctively I feel 

Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel, 

And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss, 

For every heart best knoweth its own loss. 

I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white 

Through the pale dusk of the impending night; 

O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws 

Its golden lilies mingled with the rose; 

We give to each a tender thought, and pass 

Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass, 

Unto these scenes frequented by our feet 

When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet. 

What shall I say to you? What can I say 

Better than silence is? When I survey 

This throng of faces turned to meet my own, 

Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown, 

Transformed the very landscape seems to be; 

It is the same, yet not the same to me. 

So many memories crowd upon my brain, 

So many ghosts are in the wooded plain, 

I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread, 

As from a house where some one lieth dead. 

I cannot go;--I pause;--I hesitate; 

My feet reluctant linger at the gate; 

As one who struggles in a troubled dream 

To speak and cannot, to myself I seem. 

Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears! 

Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years! 

Whatever time or space may intervene, 

I will not be a stranger in this scene. 

Here every doubt, all indecision, ends; 

Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends! 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from "Morituri Salutamus"