12 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE ACADEMY. 



Has Gannett tracked the wild Aurora's path ? 

 Has Bowdoin found his all-surrounding sphere? 



What question puzzles ciphering Philomath ? 

 Could Williams make the hidden causes clear 

 Of the Dark Day that filled 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 



Range its long columns, in the days of old 

 The live volcano shot its angry blaze, — 

 Dead since the showers of Noah's watery days; 



How when the lightning split the mighty rock, 

 The spreading fury 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 Dointed to her emntv thrones. 



Dreaming of orbs to eyes of earth unknown, 

 Herschel looked heavenwards in the starlij 



Lost in those awful depths he trod alone. 

 Laplace stood mute before the lifted veil; 

 While home-bred Humboldt trimmed his t 



mortal 



Whence the wide realms of Nature we descry ; 

 In vain their eyes our longing fathers strained 

 To scan with wondering gaze the summits hkh 



^ ^^v, xjll^ ommiiiuo ii j- 



beneath 



