12 CENTEXNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE ACADEMY. 



Has Gannett tracked the wild Aurora's path ? 

 Has Bowdoin found his all-surrounding sphere ? 



AVhat question puzzles ciphering Philomath ? 

 Could Williams make the hidden causes clear 

 Of the Dark Day that fiUed the land with fear ? 



Dear ancient schoolboys ! Nature taught to them 

 The simple lessons of the star and flower, 



Showed them strange sights ; how on a single stem — 

 Admire the marvels of Creative Power! — 

 Twin apples grew, one sweet, the other sour ; 



How from the hilltop where our eyes behold 

 In even ranks the plumed and bannered maize 



Eange its long columns, in the days of old 

 The live volcano shot its angiy blaze, — 

 Dead since the showers of Noah's watery days; 



How when the lightning split the mighty rock. 

 The spreading fuiy of the shaft was spent ; 



How the young scion joined the alien stock, 



And when and where the homeless swallows went 

 To pass the winter of their discontent 



Scant were the gleanings in those years of dearth; 



No Cuvier yet had clothed the fossil bones 

 That slumbered, waiting for their second birth ; 



No Lyell read the legend of the stones; 



Science still pointed to her empty flhrones. 



Dreaming of orbs to eyes of earth unknown, 



Herschel looked heavenwards in the starlight pale ; 



Lost in those awful depths he trod alone. 

 Laplace stood mute before the lifted veil; 

 While home-bred Humboldt trimmed his toy-ship's sail. 



No mortal feet these loftier heights had gained 

 Whence the wide realms of Nature we descry ; 



In vain their eyes our longing fathers strained 

 To scan with wondering gaze the summits high 

 That far beneath their children's footpaths lie. 



