That knew us till our elders pushed us forth
To larger life,—as eagles push their young,
New-fledged and wondering, from the eyrie’s edge,
To cater for themselves.
I fell in, there,
With Gilbert Ripley, once my chum at Yale.
Poor Gilbert groaned along a double year,—
Read, spoke, boxed, fenced, rowed, trod the foot-ball ground,—
Loving the college library more than Greek,
His meerschaum most of all. But when we came