’Throned on a cliff serene Man saw the sun hold a red torch above the farthest seas, and the fierce island pinnacles put on in his defence their sombre panoplies; Foremost the white mists eddied, trailed and spun like seekers, emulous to clasp his knees, till all the beauty of the scene seemed one, led by the secret whispers of the breeze.

   ’The sun’s torch suddenly flashed upon his face
   and died; and he sat content in subject night
   and dreamed of an old dead foe that had sought
     and found him;
   a beast stirred bodly in his resting-place;
   And the cold came; Man rose to his master-height,
   shivered, and turned away; but the mists were
     round him.’

If there is any of you here so rare that the seekers have taken an ill-will to him, as to the boy who wrote those lines, I ask you to be careful.  Henley says in that poem we were speaking of: 

   ’Under the bludgeonings of Chance
   My head is bloody but unbowed.’

A fine mouthful, but perhaps ‘My head is bloody and bowed’ is better.

Let us get back to that tent with its songs and cheery conversation.  Courage.  I do not think it is to be got by your becoming solemn-sides before your time.  You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by.  Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.  Diligence—­ambition; noble words, but only if ‘touched to fine issues.’  Prizes may be dross, learning lumber, unless they bring you into the arena with increased understanding.  Hanker not too much after worldly prosperity—­that corpulent cigar; if you became a millionaire you would probably go swimming around for more like a diseased goldfish.  Look to it that what you are doing is not merely toddling to a competency.  Perhaps that must be your fate, but fight it and then, though you fail, you may still be among the elect of whom we have spoken.  Many a brave man has had to come to it at last.  But there are the complacent toddlers from the start.  Favour them not, ladies, especially now that every one of you carries a possible marechal’s baton under her gown.  ‘Happy,’ it has been said by a distinguished man, ’is he who can leave college with an unreproaching conscience and an unsullied heart.’  I don’t know; he sounds to me like a sloppy, watery sort of fellow; happy, perhaps, but if there be red blood in him impossible.  Be not disheartened by ideals of perfection which can be achieved only by those who run away.  Nature, that ‘thrifty goddess,’ never gave you ’the smallest scruple of her excellence’ for that.  Whatever bludgeonings may be gathering for you, I think one feels more poignantly at your age than ever again in life.  You have not our December roses to help you; but you have June coming, whose roses do not wonder, as do ours even while they give us their fragrance—­wondering most when they give us most—­that we should linger on an empty scene.  It may indeed be monstrous but possibly courageous.