Quarterly, 1856.

CORSICA

ANON.

  A lonely island in the South, it shows
    Its frosted brow, and waves its shaggy woods,
    And sullenly above the billow broods. 
  Here he that shook the frighted world arose. 
  ’Twas here he gained the strength the wing to plume,
    To swoop upon the Arno’s classic plains,
    And drink the noblest blood of Europe’s veins—­
  His eye but glanced and nations felt their doom! 
  Alas! “how art thou fall’n, oh Lucifer,
    Son of the morning!” thou who wast the scourge
    And glory of the earth—­whose nod could urge. 
  Proud armies deathward at the trump of war! 
    And did’st thou die on lone Helena’s isle? 
    And art thou nought but dust and ashes vile?

Quarterly, 1857.

LOOKING BACKWARD

WASHINGTON GLADDEN ’59

From one who belonged in a remote antiquity to the fraternity of college editors, a contribution to this centennial number[1] has been solicited.  Perhaps I can do no better than to recall a few impressions of my own life in college.  Every year, at the banquet, I observe that I am pushed a little nearer to the border where the almond tree flourishes, and I shall soon have a right to be reminiscent and garrulous.  At the next centennial I shall not be called on; this is my last chance.

I came to college in the fall of 1856.  My class had been in college for a year, so that the vicissitudes of a freshman are no part of my memory.  I shall never forget that evening when I first entered Williamstown, riding on the top of the North Adams stage.  The September rains had been abundant, and the meadows and slopes were at their greenest; the atmosphere was as nearly transparent as we are apt to see it; the sun was just sinking behind the Taconics, and the shadows were creeping up the eastern slopes of Williams and Prospect; as we paused on the little hill beyond Blackinton the outline of the Saddle was defined against a sky as rich and deep as ever looked down at sunset on Naples or Palermo.  I thought then that I had never seen a lovelier valley, and I have had no occasion to revise that judgment.  To a boy who had seen few mountains that hour was a revelation.  On the side of the picturesque, the old way of transportation was better than the new.  The boy who is dumped with his trunks at the station near the factory on the flat gets no such abundant entrance into Williamstown as was vouchsafed to the boy who rode in triumphantly on the top of Jim Bridges’ stage.