Nicest place that ever was seen,— Colleges red and Common green,

Sidewalks brownish with trees between. 20
Sweetest spot beneath the skies
When the canker-worms don't rise,
When the dust, that sometimes flies
Into your mouth and ears and eyes,
In a quiet slumber lies,
Not in the shape of unbaked pies
Such as barefoot children prize.

A kind of harbor it seems to be,
Facing the flow of a boundless sea.
Rows of gray old Tutors stand
Ranged like rocks above the sand;
Rolling beneath them, soft and green,
Breaks the tide of bright sixteen,
One wave, two waves, three waves, four,
Sliding up the sparkling floor:
Then it ebbs to flow no more,

Wandering off from shore to shore

With its freight of golden ore!

Pleasant place for boys to play; —

Better keep your girls away;

Hearts get rolled as pebbles do
Which countless fingering waves pursue,
And every classic beach is strown

30

40

With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red

stone.

About those conditions?' Well, now you

go

140

And do as I tell you, and then you'll know.
Once a year, on Commencement day,
If you 'Il only take the pains to stay,
You'll see the President in the CHAIR,
Likewise the Governor sitting there.
The President rises; both old and young
May hear his speech in a foreign tongue,
The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear,
Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair?
And then his Excellency bows,

As much as to say that he allows.
The Vice-Gub. next is called by name;
He bows like t' other, which means the

1 For nearly forty years, from 1851 to 1889, Holmes never failed to bring a poem to the annual reunion of his college class. These poems, merely occasional,' and local as they were in origin, form a section in his collected works which is perhaps the most important, and, except for his best humorous narratives and his two finest lyrics, the most likely to survive; for, with all Holmes's characteristic wit and humor, they celebrate feelings that are broadly and typically American -class loyalty and college loyalty, and growing out of these, the loyalty of man's enduring friendship, and loyalty to country.

The famous class of '29' counted among its members a chief-justice of Massachusetts, George T. Bigelow (the 'Judge' of this poem); a justice of the United

That boy with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book,

And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!

So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too!

States Supreme Court, B. R. Curtis (the boy with the three-decker brain'); the great preacher, James Freeman Clarke; Professor Benjamin Peirce ('that boy with the grave mathematical look'); and the author of America,' S. F. Smith. For a full list of members of the class, see the Cambridge Edition of Holmes's Poetical Works, p. 340.

1 Hon. Francis B. Crowninshield, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

2 G. W. Richardson, of Worcester, Massachusetts. Hon. George L. Davis.

4

why, yes! God bless me ! and was it so long ago?

I fear I'm growing forgetful, as old folks do, you know;

Holmes's fiftieth birthday.

'I know it,' I said, 'old fellow; you speak the solemn truth;

A man can't live to a hundred and likewise keep his youth;

But what if the ten years coming shall silver-streak my hair,

You know I shall then be forty; of course I shall not care.

'At forty a man grows heavy and tired of fun and noise;

Leaves dress to the five-and-twenties and love to the silly boys;

No foppish tricks at forty, no pinching of waists and toes,

But high-low shoes and flannels and good thick worsted hose.'

20

1859.

(1877.)

THE TWO STREAMS1