CLASS POEM
Read in Sanders Theater at the Harvard Class Day Exercises, 1903.
Reprinted with permission.
BY LANGDON WARNER
Not unto every one of us shall come
The bugle call that sounds for famous deeds;
Not far lands, but the pleasant paths of home,
Not broad seas to traffic, but the meads
Of fruitful midland ways, where daily life
Down trellised vistas, heavy in the Fall,
Seems but the decent way apart from strife;
And love, and work, and laughter there seem all.
War, and the Orient Sun uprising,
The East, the West, and Man's shrill clamorous strife,
Travail, disaster, flood, and far emprising,
Man may not reach, yet take fast hold on life.
Let us now praise men who are not famous,
Striving for good name rather than for great;
Hear we the quiet voice calling to claim us,
Heed it no less than the trumpet-call of fate!
Profit we to-day by the men who've gone before us,
Men who dared, and lived, and died, to speed us on our way.
Fair is their fame, who make that mighty chorus,
And gentle is the heritance that comes to us to-day.
They pulled with the strength that was in them,
But 'twas not for the pewter cup,
And not for the fame 'twould win them
When the length of the race was up.
For the college stood by the river,
And they heard, with cheeks that glowed,
The voice of the coxswain calling
At the end of the course—"Well rowed!"
We have pulled at the sweep and run at the games,
We have striven to stand to our boyhood aims,
And we know the worth of our fathers' names;
Shall we have less care for our own?
The praise of men they dared despise,
They set the game above the prize,
Must we fear to look in our fathers' eyes,
Nor reap where they have sown?
Do we lose the zest we've known before?
The joy of running?—The kick of the oar
When the ash sweeps buckle and bend?
Is the goal too far?—Too hard to gain?
We know that the candle is not the play,
We know the reward is not to-day,
And may not come at the end.
But we hear the voice of each bygone class
From the river's bank when our own crews pass,
And the backs of the men are bowed,
With a steady lift and a squandering strength,
For the heave that shall drive us a nation's length,
Till the coxswain calls—"Well rowed."
Now all to the tasks that may find us—
To the saddle, the home, or the sea,
Still hearing the voices behind us
The voices that set us free;
Free to be bound by our honor,
Free to our birthright of toil,
The masters, and slaves, of the nation,
The Serfs, and the Lords, of the soil!
Proudly we lift the burdens
That humbled the ages past,
And pray to the God that gave them
We may bear them on to the last;
That our sons and our younger brothers,
When our gaps in the front they fill,
May know that the class has faltered not,
And the line is even still.
Then out to the wind and weather!
Down the course our fathers showed,
And finish well together,
As the coxswain calls—"Well rowed!"