POEM.--_Tempora Mutantur_. _Poetical Works_. John G. Saxe. P. 98.
A Boston gentleman declares, By all the gods above, below, That our degenerate sons and heirs Must let their Greek and Latin go! Forbid, O Fate, we loud implore, A dispensation harsh as that; What! wipe away the sweets of yore; The dear "_amo, amas, amat?_"
The sweetest hour the student knows Is not when poring over French, Or twisted in Teutonic throes, Upon a hard collegiate bench; 'Tis when on roots and kais and gars He feeds his soul and feels it glow, Or when his mind transcends the stars With "_Zoa mou, sas agapo!_"
So give our bright, ambitious boys An inkling of these pleasures, too-- A little smattering of the joys Their dead and buried fathers knew; And let them sing--while glorying that Their sires so sang, long years ago-- The songs "_amo, amas, amat_" And "_Zoa mou, sas agapo!_"
[Footnote in original book (published 1916): Copyright. Used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.]
I remember the very day when the schoolmaster gave it to me.... And I remember that the rather stern and aquiline face of our teacher relaxed into mildness for a moment. Both we and our books must have looked very fresh and new to him, though we may all be a little battered now; at least, my _New Latin Tutor_ is. It is a very precious book, and it should be robed in choice Turkey morocco, were not the very covers too much a part of the association to be changed. For between them I gathered the seed-grain of many harvests of delight; through this low archway I first looked upon the immeasurable beauty of words....
What liquid words were these: _aqua_, _aura_, _unda_! All English poetry that I had yet learned by heart--it is only children who learn by heart, grown people "commit to memory"--had not so awakened the vision of what literature might mean. Thenceforth all life became ideal....
Then human passion, tender, faithful, immortal, came also by and beckoned. "But let me die," she said. "Thus, thus it delights me to go under the shades." Or that infinite tenderness, the stronger even for its opening moderation of utterance, the last sigh of Aeneas after Dido,--
Nec me meminisse pigebit Elissam Dum memor ipse mihi, dum spiritus hos regit artus....