YALE ALUMNI WEEKLY
NATHAN BALE.
The Two Poems Read by Judge
Finch at East Haddam.
The following poems by Judge Francis
M. Finch, Yale ’49, one of which was
written forty-seven years, were read at
East Haddam, June 6. The occasion
was the celebration of the 145th anniver-
sary of Nathan Hale’s birth, when a
bust of the patriot was unveiled and the
schoolhouse he taught in dedicated under
the auspices of the New York and Con-
necticut Societies of the Sons of the
American Revolution:
And one there was, his name immortal
now,
Star-written on historic roll of stars,
And shining down its patient lesson: one
Who died not to the roll-throbs of the
drum,
Or in some swirl or rush of desperate
charge
Where storm of all builds bravery of
each;
But friendless and alone, in spuare of
guns, :
Without least help of tender touch or
tear,
Swung off with scandal of a felon’s
death,
For loving more his native land than life!
Dead in the primal splendor of his youth;
Just come of age to cast one resolute
vote
For freedom of a shackled land and law
Although he knew the ballot might be—
death !
Away from sheltering arms of mother-
hood,
From sister’s love swift glooming to
despair,
From startled comrades in the shudder-
ing camp,
With even God shut out so far as man
Could bar God’s road to Heaven ;—so,
he died.
With courage almost solemn in its calm,
Born of that Pilgrim blood which fought
the snows
The famine and the Indian hachet, till
Grim rocks of coast were into gardens
ground,
And girt with homes of freemen; valleys
tilled,
And filled,—with just such courage, so,
he died.
I do not know what came to him that
t,—
Last night of all,—but surely some one
came
Down from the sorrowing angels, bring-
ing Peace
That “passeth understanding,” Faith and
Hope BS
ae from seraphic bloomings of the
sky
And filled his soul with fragrance: so
he died,
How much did he foresee?
some gleam
—— dying glaze of eye, some instant
as |
As parting soul began to feel its wings,
Of that approaching hour when Victory
Should lay its crown on Freedom’s
tangled locks,
_ And smoothing down the furrows of the
I hope,
war,
Make golden all the fields with sheaves
of Peace.
Aye, more:
he saw
Prophetic glories of the nation saved
For Bai he gave his young life cheer-
ully.
A rim of States along Atlantic coast;
a eine back to Alleghan and
ake ;
Across brown river sweeping’ swift to
Gulf ;
Making the prairie tesselated floor
Of field and farm, till barred by sullen
range
That threw down rock and ice as chal-
lenge glove
Of knight in granite armor; bursting
through
Resistant cliffs; unlocking all their gold;
With cities sowing far Pacific shores;
And swinging bridge on triple island-
piers
To reach the Orient;—all along the
march
A people free,—self-poised,
erned,—free
And lifting Freedom as a beacon’s blaze!
I do not know if vision such was his
As death threw back the gates eternal,
though
perhaps in that last loox
self-gov-
In that last moment of unfettered soul
When out it breaks, exultant, from its
threat:
There come all refluent days of weary
Past,
And, sometimes, to the Spirit rapt and
tense,
Gleam-glories of a Future instant framed
Of years afar as deepest depth of star.
But this I know:—that he who early
taught
The children of this village-valley till
The drum of Lexington beat war-alarm
Taught something graver, something
else that gave
To simple school-house grand cathedral
lift,
And carved his name on column of our
dead :—
Taught us the love of country: simple,
pure,
Above all else but God: unselfish, swift
To stake not fortune only but the life
itself
If that should be sole buckler of the State.
We need to learn the lesson; need to go
Back on our knees to that lone martyr
grave |
Where lips, though century-silent, yet
may teach,’ .
bite myrtle lattice and with murmurs
ow,
Repentance for our load of gathered sins;
Fresh duty of awakened citizen
To tear and rend false mask of party
shams,
To lash the bawling demagogue with
scorn
Whose thongs cuts deep;
spoilsmen out,
With stolen plunder dripping from their
to drive the
teeth ;
About the briber’s neck to hang his
shame
And burn to blisters hand that sells its
vote,
Till that pure patriot love of elder days
Comes back to clean the freedom we
have soiled,
Comes back to sweeten all our native air.
And so, in hope the lesson may be
learned
And some late love adorn heroic name,
I bring again memorial song of youth,
And in its rythmic billows drown the
years.
June, 1900.
ed
To drum-beat and heart-beat
A soldier marches by:
There is color in his cheek,
There is courage in his eye,
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat
In a moment he must die!
By star-light and moon-light
He seeks the Briton’s camp:
He hears the rustling flag
And the armed sentry’s tramp;
And the star-light and moon-light
His silent wanderings lamp.
With slow tread and still tread
He scans the tented line,
And he counts the battery guns
By the gaunt and shadowy pine;
And his slow tread and still tread
Gives no warning sign.
The dark wave, the plumed wave !—
It meets his eager glance,
And it sparkles ’neath the stars
- Like he glimmer of a lance;
A dark wave, a plumed wave
On an emerald expanse.
A sharp clang, a steel clang,
And terror in the sound!
For the sentry falcon-eyed
In the camp a spy hath found.
With a sharp clang, a steel clang,
The patriot is bound.
With calm brow, steady brow,
He listens to his doom:
In his look there is no fear
Nor a shadow trace of gloom:
But with calm brow and steady brow
He robes him for the tomb.
In the long night, the still night,
He kneels upon the sod;
And the brutal guards withhold
F’en the solemn word of God!
In the long night, the still night,
He walks where Christ hath trod.
"Neath the blue morn, the sunny morn,
He dies upon the tree,
And he mourns that he can lose
But one life for Liberty:
And in the blue morn, the sunny morn,
His spirit-wings are free.
401
But his last words, his message words,
They burn, lest friendly eye |
Should read how proud and calm
A patriot could die, |
With his last words, his dying words,
A soldier’s battle-cry!
From Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf,
From monument and urn
The sad of earth, the glad of Heaven
His tragic fate shall learn;
And on Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf
The name of Hate shall burn!
July, 1853.
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Xn PAlemoviam.
WILBUR R. BACON.
Witpur R. BAcon—born at Middletown,
Conn., March 25, 1844—died in New
York, May 9, 1900.
If, during our college life, we had been
called upon to name the member of our
class least likely to die at the early age
of fifty-six, we should pretty surely have
picked out Wilbur Bacon. Always in
the pink of condition, careful in his
habits, with the chest, back, neck and.
arms of a young Hercules, with a strong,
level-headed mind, backed by a superb
and well-trained body, he seemed to us
then the incarnation of mental and physi-
cal force and determination. Not alone
by his classmates but by all Yale men
of his day, Bacon will long be remem-
bered as the man, who, at a time of
discouragement and despondency, when,
in spite of trial after trial, Yale had
never won a university race, and when
Harvard seemed everywhere invincible
on land and water, “touched the dead
corpse of Yale’s athletic spirit and it
rose upon its feet.”
Fitted for college at Russell’s School,
and already an oarsman, Bacon had the
then unusual honor of being put by that
stout, keen-eyed, veteran rowing man,
Captain Hamilton Wallis of ’63, on a
Glyuna crew in the very first races in
the Fall of Freshman year, being the
only one of our class thus distinguished.
Taking part in all the regattas of Fresh-
men and Sophomore year, and success-
ful in all, in Junior year Bacon inspired
the confidence necessary to raise and
sustain a crew willing to once more
tackle triumphant Harvard after a four
years’ cessation of university racing.
Undeniably, a natural leader and cap-
tain, asking nothing of his men in the
way of either work or self-denial of
which he was not more than willing to
be the example, fiercely resolved that
Yale should take her rightful place at
the front, Bacon trained his men with a
spartan rigor, which, so far as I can
learn, has not been surpassed in the 36
years since. However: different in de-
tails may be the training theories of to-
day, Bacon’s idea that the best prepara-
tion for any specific task was to steadily
give a man all the work he could stand
without undue fatigue in the line of the
feat he was to accomplish, has always
seemed to me the correct one in more
things than boat races.
Whatever views we may hold in later
life as to the value of the time given
to athletics in college, it is certain that
Yale’s success over Harvard in 1864 and
1865 had an instant effect in increasing
the number of students in succeeding
classes. And Bacon’s taking a Town-
send, together with the high stands of
Coffin and dear old Stoskopf and the
position since of Seymour and Bennett
on the bench and of Pierson in the mis-
sionary field. show that success in athle-
tics. and success in higher things may
very well go together. No hero has
warmer, more unselfish, more devoted
admirers than a college hero among col-
lege boys. Who does not remember the
pride Yale felt in Wilbur, the high
expectations we had for him, our ardent
hopes, our generous beliefs? Whether
justified by the event or not, who of us
would not like to live over again those
years of youth and be capable again of
the same joyous, loyal, unselfish en-
thusiasm ? |
After leaving college, Bacon entered
the Columbia Law School, graduated
well and was admitted to the bar. For
the law he had in many respects a mind
well fitted, and it has always been a
matter of regret to his friends that ap-
parent opportunities to make money
easier and faster in other ways should
have made him unwilling to go through
the early laborious, unrewarded days
incidental to success in that profession.
In his later years Bacon saw his class-
mates little. He died of consumption
following a severe attack of grip.
W. W. ScrRANTON.
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a nn st pe
The annual banquet of the Sophomore
Wranglers was held, Saturday evening,
June 16, at Morris Cove Hotel. I. G.
Phillips acted as toastmaster and the
following toasts were responded to:
“First Wranglers,’ H. S. Mead; “Second
Wranglers,’ Edward Easton, Jr.; ‘The
Wigwam,” Mason Trowbridge; “Criti-
cism,’ Dixon Boardman.
HISTORIANS OF NINETEEN HUNDRED.
A.D. Leavitt.
E.{B. Hill.
C. B. Thompson.
C. H. Draper.
M. P. Gould.
