Dear comrades, scattered wide and far,
Send from their homes their kindly word,
And dearer ones, unseen, unheard,
Smile on us from some heavenly star.
For life and death with God are one,
Unchanged by seeming change His care
And love are round us here and there;
He breaks no thread His hand has spun.
Soul touches soul, the muster roll
Of life eternal has no gaps;
And after half a century’s lapse
Our school-day ranks are closed and whole.
Hail and farewell! We go our way;
Where shadows end, we trust in light;
The star that ushers in the night
Is herald also of the day!
Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College,
named in honor of Eben Norton Horsford, who has
been one of the most munificent patrons of that noble
institution, and who had just published an essay claiming
the discovery of the site of the somewhat mythical
city of Norumbega, was opened with appropriate
ceremonies, in April, 1886. The following
sonnet was written for the occasion, and was read by
President Alice E. Freeman, to whom it was addressed.
Not on Penobscot’s wooded bank the spires
Of the sought City rose, nor yet beside
The winding Charles, nor where the daily tide
Of Naumkeag’s haven rises and retires,
The vision tarried; but somewhere we knew
The beautiful gates must open to our quest,
Somewhere that marvellous City of the West
Would lift its towers and palace domes in view,
And, to! at last its mystery is made known—
Its only dwellers maidens fair and young,
Its Princess such as England’s Laureate sung;
And safe from capture, save by love alone,
It lends its beauty to the lake’s green shore,
And Norumbega is a myth no more.
1886
The land, that, from the rule of kings,
In freeing us, itself made free,
Our Old World Sister, to us brings
Her sculptured Dream of Liberty,
Unlike the shapes on Egypt’s sands
Uplifted by the toil-worn slave,
On Freedom’s soil with freemen’s hands
We rear the symbol free hands gave.
O France, the beautiful! to thee
Once more a debt of love we owe
In peace beneath thy Colors Three,
We hail a later Rochambeau!
Rise, stately Symbol! holding forth
Thy light and hope to all who sit
In chains and darkness! Belt the earth
With watch-fires from thy torch uplit!
Reveal the primal mandate still
Which Chaos heard and ceased to be,
Trace on mid-air th’ Eternal Will
In signs of fire: “Let man be free!”
Shine far, shine free, a guiding light
To Reason’s ways and Virtue’s aim,
A lightning-flash the wretch to smite
Who shields his license with thy name!
