What shall I say to you?  What can I say
Better than silence is?  When I survey
This throng of faces turned to meet my own,
Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown,
Transformed the very landscape seems to be;
It is the same, yet not the same to me. 
So many memories crowd upon my brain,
So many ghosts are in the wooded plain,
I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread,
As from a house where some one lieth dead. 
I cannot go;—­I pause;—­I hesitate;
My feet reluctant linger at the gate;
As one who struggles in a troubled dream
To speak and cannot, to myself I seem.

Vanish the dream!  Vanish the idle fears! 
Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years! 
Whatever time or space may intervene,
I will not be a stranger in this scene. 
Here every doubt, all indecision, ends;
Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends!

Ah me! the fifty years since last we met
Seem to me fifty folios bound and set
By Time, the great transcriber, on his shelves,
Wherein are written the histories of ourselves. 
What tragedies, what comedies, are there;
What joy and grief, what rapture and despair! 
What chronicles of triumph and defeat,
Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat! 
What records of regrets, and doubts, and fears
What pages blotted, blistered by our tears! 
What lovely landscapes on the margin shine,
What sweet, angelic faces, what divine
And holy images of love and trust,
Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust!

Whose hand shall dare to open and explore
These volumes, closed and clasped forevermore? 
Not mine.  With reverential feet I pass;
I hear a voice that cries, “Alas! alas! 
Whatever hath been written shall remain,
Nor be erased nor written o’er again;
The unwritten only still belongs to thee: 
Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be.”

As children frightened by a thundercloud
Are reassured if some one reads aloud
A tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught,
Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought,
Let me endeavor with a tale to chase
The gathering shadows of the time and place,
And banish what we all too deeply feel
Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal.

In mediaeval Rome, I know not where,
There stood an image with its arm in air,
And on its lifted finger, shining clear,
A golden ring with the device, “Strike here!”
Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed
The meaning that these words but half expressed,
Until a learned clerk, who at noonday
With downcast eyes was passing on his way,
Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well,
Whereon the shadow of the finger fell;
And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found
A secret stairway leading under ground. 
Down this he passed into a spacious hall,
Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall;
And opposite in threatening attitude
With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood. 
Upon its forehead, like a coronet,
Were these mysterious words of menace set: 
“That which I am, I am; my fatal aim
None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!”