Students are at an age when to them the roses nod and the stars seem to wink. Their mental landscape is filled with budding flowers, singing birds, and rosy dawns. Every one has a right to consider his own perfection and enjoyment, his own emotions. One is better for his healthful recreations, his aspirations and ideals, his perceptions of beauty and his divine communings—the sweetness and light of the soul. We can only ask that the main purpose and trend of life may be laborious and useful, even strenuous and successful.
Lowell wrote of the pioneers who settled New England that they were men
“Who pitched a state as other men pitch tents,
And led the march of time to great events.”
The pioneers of this Commonwealth were men who here pitched a state as other men pitch tents, and are leading the march of time to great events. The age, America, offer great opportunities to educated young men and women. Use them with courage. King Henry IV. of France once gained a great victory at Arques. After the battle, as he was leading his troops toward Paris, he met one of his generals coming up late with a detachment of the army, and thus greeted him, “Go hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques and you were not there,” as though the greatest privilege in life were an opportunity to contend and win for one’s self a victory.
A few years ago I went to Ayr, the birthplace of Burns. I visited the poet’s cottage, walked by the Alloway Kirk where Tam o’ Shanter beheld the witch dance, crossed the Auld Brig and wandered by the banks and braes o’ bonny Doon—and it is a beautiful stream. I found myself repeating lines from “Tam o’ Shanter,” “Bonny Doon,” “Scots Wha Hae wi’ Wallace Bled,” and from some of the sweeter and nobler songs of Burns. And I thought of the mission of the poet. The scenery in and about Ayr is beautiful, but there is many another region equally attractive. The people with whom Burns dwelt, his neighbors and friends, were commonplace men and women, knowing the hardships, the drudgery, the pettiness of life. And yet he so sang of these scenes and these people, so touched every chord of the human heart, that annually thirty thousand travellers visit Ayr to pay their homage at the poet’s shrine. The poetic view of life is the right one. The poet sees the reality in the commonplace. Our surroundings are filled with wonderful and varied beauty when we open our eyes to the truth. Our friends and companions are splendid men and women when we see them at their worth. For happiness as well as success add poetry to heroism.
“The Inscrutable who set this orb awhirl
Gave power to strength that effort might attain;
Gave power to wit that knowledge might direct;
And so with penalties, incentives, gains,