The student ranks are closed, there is no gap;
Of other brave aspirants is no dearth;
Prowess, fidelity, and truth go on,
And few shall miss or mourn the student gone,
Reposing in the all-protecting lap
Of Mother Earth.
Too soon—O God! was it thy will that one
Of such endeavor and of noble mien,
Enrapt with living, should thus early go
From all he loved and all who loved him so,
Mid life's activities no longer known,
No longer seen?
Oh, not for aye should agonizing lips
Quiver with questionings they dare not frame;
Though in the dark penumbra of despair
Seemeth no light, nor comfort anywhere—
All things enshadowed as in dense eclipse,
No more the same.
Could we but know, in that Elysian lore
Of happy exercise still going on
Could we but know of glorious heights attained,
Of his reward, of mysteries explained,—
Ah! but to know were to lament no more
The student gone.
The Tourist.
Lo! carpet-bag and bagger occupy the land,
And prove the touring season actively begun;
His personnel and purpose can none misunderstand,
For each upon his frontlet bears his honest brand—
The fool-ish one!
By caravan and car, from country and from town,
A great grasshopper army fell foraging the land;
Like bumblebees that know not where to settle down,
Impossible it is to curb or scare or drown
The tourist band.
With guidebook, camera, with rod and gun, to shoot,
To lure the deer, the hare, the bird, the speckled trout,
The pauper or the prince unbidden they salute,
And everywhere their royal right dare none dispute—
To roam about.