Baccalaureate

    A YEAR or two, and grey Euripides,
    And Horace and a Lydia or so,
    And Euclid and the brush of Angelo,
    Darwin on man, Vergilius on bees,
    The nose and Dialogues of Socrates,
    Don Quixote, Hudibras and Trinculo,
    How worlds are spawned and where the dead gods go,--
    All shall be shard of broken memories.

    And there shall linger other, magic things,--
    The fog that creeps in wanly from the sea,
    The rotten harbor smell, the mystery
    Of moonlit elms, the flash of pigeon wings,
    The sunny Green, the old-world peace that clings
    About the college yard, where endlessly
    The dead go up and down. These things shall be
    Enchantment of our heart's rememberings.

    And these are more than memories of youth
    Which earth's four winds of pain shall blow away;
    These are earth's symbols of eternal truth,
    Symbols of dream and imagery and flame,
    Symbols of those same verities that play
    Bright through the crumbling gold of a great name.

        Archibald MacLeish