'Pereat tristitia,
Pereant osores,
Pereat diabolus,
Quivis antiburschius
Atque irrisores.'
Then as the shadows grow long, perhaps they sing again those stirring words which one returning to the third semi-centennial of his Alma Mater, wrote with all the warmth and power of manly affection:
'Count not the tears of the long-gone years,
With their moments of pain and sorrow;
But laugh in the light of their memories bright,
And treasure them all for the morrow.
Then roll the song in waves along,
While the hours are bright before us,
And grand and hale are the towers of Yale,
Like guardians towering o'er us.
'Clasp ye the hand 'neath the arches grand
That with garlands span our greeting.
With a silent prayer that an hour as fair
May smile on each after meeting:
And long may the song, the joyous song,
Roll on in the hours before us,
And grand and hale may the elms of Yale
For many a year bend o'er us.'
Then standing in closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each, a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, they pass through each hall of the long line of buildings, giving farewell cheers, and at the foot of one of the tall towers, each throws his handful of earth on the roots of an ivy, which, clinging about those brown masses of stone, in days to come, he trusts will be typical of their mutual, remembrance as he breathes the silent prayer: 'Lord, keep our memories green!'
So end the college-days of these most uproarious of mirth-makers and hardest of American students; and the hundred whose joys and sorrows have been identified through four happy years, are dispersed over the land. They are partially gathered again at Commencement, but the broken band is never completely united. On the third anniversary of their graduation, the first class-meeting takes place; and the first happy father is presented with a silver cup, suitably inscribed. On the tenth, twentieth, and other decennial years, the gradually diminishing band, in smaller and smaller numbers, meet about the beloved shrine, until only two or three gray-haired men clasp the once stout hand and renew the remembrance of 'the days that are gone.'
'They come ere life departs,
Ere winged death appears.
To throng their joyous hearts
With dreams of sunnier years:
To meet once more
Where pleasures sprang,
And arches rang
With songs of yore.'