After these services the whole body of the alumni sat at a Spartan college feast in that part of “the yard,” as we say at Cambridge, which is between Harvard and Holden Halls. And there Lowell delivered his “Commemoration Ode.” His own intense interest was evident enough, but it was reflected in what I might call the passionate interest with which people heard. It was said afterwards, and I think this appears in his letters, that the final business of writing this wonderful poem had all been done in forty-eight hours before he delivered it. But then, as the reader sees, it had been more than four years in the writing. The inspiration had come from day to day, and he poured out here the expression of what he had been thinking and feeling, in joy and sorrow, in hope and fear, in learning and forgetting, for all that period of crisis and strain.
I believe I may tell—and it shall close these broken reminiscences of the war—a story which was familiarly told at the time, and which is true. I have heard it in one or two forms, and to secure accuracy now I have asked the gentleman whom I may call the hero of the story for his own account of it. He was one of Lowell’s pupils, in the “battle class” of 1862. He has sent it to me in the following words:—
“I spent the night before Commemoration Day on a lounge in Hollis 21, the room of my classmate Hudson, who was a tutor. I could not afterwards remember dreaming of anything in particular; but as I woke I heard,
‘And what they dare to dream of, dare to die for.’
“‘Rather a good sentiment,’ I said to myself; ‘and it seems to be appropriate to the day,’—then just dawning. And so I dropped off again.
“The dinner was spread, as you remember, in the green bounded by Harvard, Hollis, and Holden. My seat was just about in the middle. Mr. Lowell was a few rods nearer Holden and a good deal nearer Hollis,—about under the more southerly window of Hollis 21. When he rose, there was a prolonged closing of the ranks,—I remember the rustle of many feet on the grass,—and Mr. Lowell waited till all was quiet before he began reading. As he read, when he came to the words,
‘Their higher instinct knew
Those love her best,’—
I began to feel, not that I had heard this before, but that something familiar was coming.
‘Who to themselves are true,’