Fisk University Portrait Book

| ARRANGED BY.

H. LESTER KESTT

CLASS .OF 1901

In every age memory has been an unpopular goddess. The poet Byron pictures
this divinity as sitting sorrowing midst mouldering ruins and withering leaves. But
the orators unveil the future as a tropic realm, magical, mysterious and surpassingly
rich. The temple where hope is worshipped is always crowded; her shrines are
never without gifts of flowers and sweet songs.

But at length has come a day when man perceives that the vast treasure to
which the present has fallen heir was bequeathed by that friend called yesterday.
The soul increases in knowledge and culture, because as it passes through lifes
rich fields memory plucks the ripe treasure on either hand, leaving behind no golden
sheaf. Philosophy, therefore, opposes that form of poetry that portrays yesterday
by the falling tower, the yellow leaf, the setting sun. Memory is a gallery holding pic-
tures of the past. Memory is a library holding wisdom for to-morrows emergen-
cies. Memory isa banqueting-hall on whose walls are the shields of vanquished ene-
mies. Memory is a eranary holding bread for to-morrows hunger, seed for to-mor-
rows sowing. That man alone has a great to-morrow who has back of him a multi-

tude of great yesterdays.Newell Dwight Hillis.

GENERAL CLINTON B. FISK, DEcEasED

MRS. CLINTON B. FISK

PRESIDENT CRAVATH, DEcEASED

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause: theres the respect

That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressors wrong, the proud mans contumely,
The pangs of despisd love, the laws delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

ahaha The undiscoverd country from whose bourn
Fiamlets Soliloquy _ No traveller returnspuzzles the will
O be or not to be,that is the question: And-makes us rather bear those ills we have
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer Than fly to others that we know not of?
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And thus the native hue of resolution
And, by opposing, end them?To die,to sleep, _[8 Sicklied oer with the pale cast of thought;
No more;and, by a sleep, to say we end And enterprises of great pith and moment,
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks With this regard, their currents turn awry,
That flesh is heir to,tis a consummation And lose the name of action.
Devoutly to be wishd. To die,to sleep; (Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1.

To sleep! perchance, to dream:ay, theres the rub; William Shakespeare.

PRESIDENT J. G. MERRILL

Ode on a Grecian Urn
By KEATS

HOU still unravishd bride of quietness!

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time!
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme!
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe, or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstacy?

JOHN KEATS

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeard,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone!
Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave _
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal; yet do not grieve,
She cannot fade, though thou hast not the bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Leadst thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or seashore
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of its folk this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets forevermore
Will silent be and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can eer return.

O Attic shape!

As doth eternity!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And happy melodist, unweari-ed,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyd,
Forever panting and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloyd,
A burning forehead and a parching tongue.

Fair Attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed!
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,

pee
ee

Ancient society looked upon the human body with the utmost veneration. The
citizen of Thebes or Memphis knew no higher ambition than a competency for em-
balming his body. Men loved unto death and beyond it the physical house in
which the soul dwelt. Every instinct of refinement and _ self-respect revolted
from the thought of discarding the body like a cast-off garment or worn-out
tool. In his dying hour it was little to Rameses that his career was to be pictured
on obelisk and preserved in pyramid, but it was very much to the King that the em-
balmer should give permanency to the body with which his soul had gone singing,
weeping and loving through three-score years and ten. The papyrus found in the
tombs tells us that the soldiers of that far-off age did not fear death itself more
than they feared falling in some secluded spot where the body, neglected and for-
gotten, would quickly give its elements back to air and earth. How noble the sen-
timent that attached dignity and honor to hand and foot! Sacred, doubly sacred, was
the body that had served the soul long and faithfully!

The soul is a city, and as Thebes had many gateways through which passed
great caravans laden with goodly treasure, so the five senses are gateways through
which journey all earths sights and sounds. Through the golden gate of the ear have
gone what noble truths, companying together what messengers of affection, what
sweet friendships. The eye is an Appian Way over which have gone all the proces-
sions of the seasons. How do hand and vision protect man? Hunters use Sharp spears

for keeping back wild beasts, but Livingstone, armed only with eye beams, drove
a snarling beast into the thicket, and Luther, lifting his great eyes upon an assassin,
made the murderer flee. What flute or harp is comparable for sweetness to the voice?
It carries warning and alarm. It will speak for you, plead for you, pray for you.
Truly, it is an architect, fulfilling Dantes dictum, piling up mountains of melody.
Serving the soul well, the body becomes sacred by service. Therefore man loves and
guards the physical house in which he lives.

Memorable forever the little room where Milton wrote, the cottage where
Shakespeare dwelt, the spot where Dante dreamed, the ruin where Phidias wrought.
But no building ever showed such comely handiwork as the temple built by divine
skill. God hath made the souls house fair to look upon. Death may close its doors,
darken its windows, and pull down its pillars; still, its very ruins are precious, to be
guarded with jealous care. How sacred the spot where lie the parents that tended
us, the bosom that shielded our infancy, the hands that carried our weakness every
whither. Men will always deem the desecration of the body or the grave blasphem-
ous. The physical house, standing, is the temple of God; falling, it must forever be
sacred in mans memory.Hillis.

ri

BUGLE SONG

HE splendor falls on castle walls, O hark! O hear! how thin and clear,
And snowy summits old in story; And thinner, clearer, farther going;
The long light shakes across the lakes O sweet and far, from cliff and scar,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, bugle, blow; set the wild echoes flying; Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow; set the wild echoes flying;
And answer echoesanswer dying, dying, dying.

MY SYMPHONY:

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and re-
_ finement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; to study hard; to think
quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the

Spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the commonthis is my sym-
phony. : WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING.

STEP

EAVEN is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.

I count this thing to be grandly true,
That a noble deed is a step toward God,

- Lifting the soul from the common sod

. To a purer air and a broader view.

We rise by the things that are under our feet,
By what we have mastered of good and gain,
By the pride deposed and the passion slain,

And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.

_ We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust,
When the morning calls us to life and light;
But our hearts grow weary, and ere the night
Our lives are trailing in sordid dust.

BX SLEP.

We hope, we resolve, we aspire, we pray,
And we think that we mount the air on wings
Beyond the recall of sensual things,

While our feet still cling to the heavy clay.

Wings for the angels, but feet for men!

We borrow the wings to find the way;

We may hope and resolve and aspire and pray,
But our feet must rise or we fall again.

Only in dreams is. a ladder thrown
From the weary earth to the sapphire walls:
But the dreams depart and the vision falls,
And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone.

- Heaven is not reached at a single bound;

But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.

ee

Youth, youth, how buoyant are thy hopes, they turn like marigolds to the
Sunny Side. Jean Ingelow.

PRESS OF
me) WEED-PARSONS PRINTING Co.
ALBANY, N. Y.