1925

To you, the Class of 1925,

All cups are raised in this, your hour of triumph,

Your time is ripe. The world is yours. Come, take it!

Through four short years, the best you've ever spent

Or e'er will spend, you've--well, what have you done?

You've studied some, enough, perhaps, to learn

How small a thing a man is, yet how great.

If this you've learned and nothing more,

What matters it you can't recall the date

Of Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon?

The world cries out for men, not dictionaries.

And as forever you depart from hence,

Think over once again these wise old words

The Harvard sage, the greatest of them all,

Wrote down almost a hundred years ago:

"There comes a time in each man's education

When he's convinced that envy's ignorance

And imitation's naught but suicide;

That he must take himself for better or for worse

As his own lot; for though the universe

Is full of good, there's none of it for him

But through his toil bestowed upon himself.

The pow'r that lies in him is new in nature,

And none but he knows what that is which he

Can do, nor does he know till he has tried."