“Like travellers with their hearts intent
  Upon a distant journey bent,
  We rest upon the earliest stage
  Of life’s laborious pilgrimage;
  But like the band of pilgrims gay
  (Whom Chaucer sings) at close of day,
  That turned with mirth, and cheerful din,
  To pass their evening at the inn,
  Hot from the ride and dusty, we,
  But yet untired and stout and free,
  And like the travellers by the door,
  Sit down and talk the journey o’er.”

As a specimen of the character of the Ode which is always sung on Class Day to the tune “Fair Harvard,”—­which is the name by which the melody “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms” has been adopted at Cambridge,—­that which was written by Joshua Danforth Robinson for the class of 1851 is here inserted.

 “The days of thy tenderly nurture are done,
    We call for the lance and the shield;
  There’s a battle to fight and a crown to be won,
    And onward we press to the field! 
  But yet, Alma Mater, before we depart,
    Shall the song of our farewell be sung,
  And the grasp of the hand shall express for the heart
    Emotions too deep for the tongue.

 “This group of thy sons, Alma Mater, no more
    May gladden thine ear with their song,
  For soon we shall stand upon Time’s crowded shore,
    And mix in humanity’s throng. 
  O, glad be the voices that ring through thy halls
    When the echo of ours shall have flown,
  And the footsteps that sound when no longer thy walls
    Shall answer the tread of our own!

 “Alas! our dear Mother, we see on thy face
    A shadow of sorrow to-day;
  For while we are clasped in thy farewell embrace,
    And pass from thy bosom away,
  To part with the living, we know, must recall
    The lost whom thy love still embalms,
  That one sigh must escape and one tear-drop must fall
    For the children that died in thy arms.

 “But the flowers of affection, bedewed by the tears
    In the twilight of Memory distilled,
  And sunned by the love of our earlier years,
    When the soul with their beauty was thrilled,
  Untouched by the frost of life’s winter, shall blow,
    And breathe the same odor they gave
  When the vision of youth was entranced by their glow,
    Till, fadeless, they bloom o’er the grave.”

A most genial account of the exercises of the Class Day of the graduates of the year 1854 may be found in Harper’s Magazine, Vol.  IX. pp. 554, 555.

CLASSIC.  One learned in classical literature; a student of the ancient Greek and Roman authors of the first rank.

These men, averaging about twenty-three years of age, the best Classics and Mathematicians of their years, were reading for Fellowships.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 35.

A quiet Scotchman irreproachable as a classic and a whist-player.—­Ibid., p. 57.