Archibald MacLeish

Here you will find the Poem Baccalaureate of poet Archibald MacLeish

Baccalaureate

A year or two, and grey Euripides, 
And Horace and a Lydia or so, 
And Euclid and the brush of Angelo, 
Darwin on man, Vergilius on bees, 
The nose and Dialogues of Socrates, 
Don Quixote, Hudibras and Trinculo, 
How worlds are spawned and where the dead gods go,-- 
All shall be shard of broken memories.

And there shall linger other, magic things,-- 
The fog that creeps in wanly from the sea, 
The rotton harbor smell, the mystery 
Of moonlit elms, the flash of pigeon wings, 
The sunny Green, the old-world peace that clings 
About the college yard, where endlessly 
The dead go up and down. These things shall be 
Enchantment of our heart's rememberings.

And these are more than memories of youth 
Which earth's four winds of pain shall blow away; 
These are earth's symbols of eternal truth, 
Symbols of dream and imagery and flame, 
Symbols of those same verities that play 
Bright through the crumbling gold of a great name.