THE OCCASIONAL POEM

CHARLES DICKENS

Read by Mr. Watson in New York, at the celebration of the Dickens Centenary, 1912. Reprinted from the public press

BY WILLIAM WATSON

When Nature first designed

In her all-procreant mind

The man whom here to-night we are met to honor
When first the idea of Dickens flashed upon her -
"Where, where," she said, "upon my populous earth
Shall this prodigious child be brought to birth?
Where shall we have his earliest wondering look
Into my magic book?

Shall he be born where life runs like a brook,
Pleasant and placid as of old it ran,

Far from the sound and shock of mighty deeds,

Among soft English meads?

Or shall he first my pictured volume scan
Where London lifts its hot and fevered brow
For cooling night to fan ?"

"Nay, nay," she said, "I have a happier plan
For where at Portsmouth, on the embattled tides
The ships of war step out with thundering prow
And shake their stormy sides-

In yonder place of arms, whose gaunt sea wall
Flings to the clouds the far-heard bugle call -
He shall be born amid the drums and guns,

He shall be born among my fighting sons,
Perhaps the greatest warrior of them all."

II

So there, where from the forts and battle gear
And all the proud sea babbles Nelson's name,
Into the world this later hero came

He, too, a man that knew all moods but fear-
He, too, a fighter. Yet not his the strife
That leaves dark scars on the fair face of life.
He did not fight to rend the world apart;
He fought to make it one in mind and heart,
Building a broad and noble bridge to span
The icy chasm that sunders man from man.
Wherever wrong had fixed its bastions deep,
There did his fierce yet gay assault surprise
Some fortress girt with lucre or with lies;

There his light battery stormed some ponderous keep; There charged he up the steep,

A knight on whom no palsying torpor fell,

Keen to the last to break a lance with Hell.

And still undimmed his conquering weapons shine;
On his bright sword no spot of rust appears,

And still across the years

His soul goes forth to battle, and in the face

Of whatso'er is false, or cruel, or base,

He hurls his gage and leaps among the spears,
Being armed with pity and love and scorn divine,
Immortal laughter and immortal tears.

THE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

BY THOMAS CAMPBELL

Ye Mariners of England

That guard our native seas!

Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,

The battle and the breeze!

Your glorious standard launch again

To match another foe:

And sweep through the deep,

While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirit of your fathers

Shall start from every wave,

For the deck it is our field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:

Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell

Your manly heart shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.

Britannia needs no bulwarks,

No towers along the steep;

Her march is o'er the mountain waves,

Her home is on the deep.

With thunders from her native oak

She quells the floods below,

As they roar on the shore,

When the stormy winds do blow;

When the battle rages loud and long

And the stormy winds do blow.

The meteor-flag of England

Shall yet terrific burn;

Till danger's troubled night depart
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,

When the storm has ceased to blow;
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
And the storm has ceased to blow.

CLASS POEM

Read in Sanders Theater at the Harvard Class Day Exercises, 1903. Reprinted with permission

BY LANGDON WARNER

Not unto every one of us shall come

The bugle call that sounds for famous deeds;
Not far lands, but the pleasant paths of home,
Not broad seas to traffic, but the meads
Of fruitful midland ways, where daily life
Down trellised vistas, heavy in the Fall,
Seems but the decent way apart from strife;
And love, and work, and laughter there seem all.

War, and the Orient Sun uprising,

The East, the West, and Man's shrill clamorous strife, Travail, disaster, flood, and far emprising,

Man may not reach, yet take fast hold on life.

Let us now praise men who are not famous,

Striving for good name rather than for great; Hear we the quiet voice calling to claim us,

Heed it no less than the trumpet-call of fate!

Profit we to-day by the men who've gone before us,

Men who dared, and lived, and died, to speed us on our

way.

Fair is their fame, who make that mighty chorus,

And gentle is the heritance that comes to us to-day.

They pulled with the strength that was in them,
But 'twas not for the pewter cup,

And not for the fame 'twould win them
When the length of the race was up.

For the college stood by the river,

And they heard, with cheeks that glowed, The voice of the coxswain calling

At the end of the course

"Well rowed!"

We have pulled at the sweep and run at the games,
We have striven to stand to our boyhood aims,
And we know the worth of our fathers' names;

Shall we have less care for our own?

The praise of men they dared despise,
They set the game above the prize,
Must we fear to look in our fathers' eyes,
Nor reap where they have sown?

Do we lose the zest we've known before?
The joy of running? - The kick of the oar
When the ash sweeps buckle and bend?