MEMORIAL ODE 365 
All else is empty air, 
A promise vainly fair, 
Like the bright beauty of the ocean spray 
Tossed up toward heaven, but never reaching 
there. 
Not in the past, but in the future, we 
Must seek the mastery 
Of fate and fortune, thought and word and 
deed. 
Gone, gone for aye, the little Puritan homes ; 
Gone the beleaguered town, from out whose 
spires 
.Flashed forth the warning fires 
Telling the Cambridge rustics, “ Percy comes!” 
And gone those later days of grief and shame 
When slavery changed our court-house to a jail, 
And blood-drops stained its threshold. Now 
we hail, 
After the long affray, 
A time of calmer order, wider aim, 
More mingled races, manhood’s larger frame, 
A city’s broader sweep, the Boston of to-day. 
Vv. 
They say our city’s star begins to wane, 
Our heroes pass away, our poets die, 
Our passionate ardors mount no more so high. 
’T is but an old alarm, the affright of wealth, 
The cowardice of culture, wasted pain ! 
