considerable interval of time between part V and this part. Explain the figure used.

Lines 136-162: "The magician's scroll" was a parchment that granted wishes for its possessor, but shrank with every wish. See Balzac, Le Peau de Chagrin (translated into English under the title The Magic Skin). Refer line 142 to line 108. What have the two sons of the family become? Lines 163-168: This prelude contains a beautiful description of nature. Explain the simile in line 167, and the word ring; explain the personifications in line 166.

Lines 169-198: Lines 169-171 utilize in metaphor the description in the prelude, speaking of life in terms of nature. This closing part is remarkable for the way in which it gathers up the earlier parts, and rounds the poem into rhetorical completeness. Compare line 173 with line 1; line 175 with line 2; lines 182, 183 with line 108; line 185 with line 49; line 186 with line 27; line 187 with line 7; line 188 with line 13. The simile in lines 194, 195 refers to the number of the descendants, children and grandchildren. The figure in lines 196-198 refers to the apparent endlessness of the home the parents have founded, one generation following another in their imagination, through ages to come.

IV. Study the meter and rime-plan of the poem. The preludes are all regular; state their length, their line-structure, and their stanza-structure. The lines describing the pictures are shorter and therefore more animated. Name the meter. What can you say of the rime? Study the poem for alliteration, assonance, and other devices for securing melody and harmony.

V. Discuss the feeling the author shows in each picture, and the tone he gives the description of each.

VI. The poem as a whole is quiet and meditative — it is a

series of six dream pictures. The poet writes tenderly, as one who has lived through these scenes and loves the memory of them. This poem would earn for Longfellow the title of "Poet of the Home and the Fireside," if he had no other claim upon it. The poem is true to life, inspires the imagination, and pleases the artistic sense by its beauty of expression. Read it once more, this time aloud, that you may enjoy the harmonious whole and the charm of its music.

MORITURI SALUTAMUS

I. As the fiftieth anniversary of the graduation of the class of 1825 of Bowdoin College approached, Longfellow was invited to honor the occasion with a poem. He disliked to write "occasional" poems, and hesitated to accept the invitation. But, on seeing a copy of Gerome's picture, he received an inspiration, and in ten days he had composed what has been called "the grandest hymn to old age ever written." Gerome's picture represents gladiators in the Roman arena saluting the emperor before the combat. "Hail, Cæsar, Emperor! Those about to die salute thee," are their words. Longfellow's title means, "We, about to die, salute" a very appropriate title for an old man's "hymn to old age." The Latin couplet from Ovid is also appropriate:

Seasons slip away, and we grow old with the silent years;
And days course by, no bridle restraining.

II. Read the poem with the following outline:1. Introduction - explanation of the title, and references to the picture: lines 1-4.

AVE, CESAR, IMPERATOR

UNIV. OF

Gerome

2. Poem proper: lines 5ff.

a. Salutation to the College and its surroundings: lines 5ff.

b. Salutation to the memory of the teachers, only one of whom is living: lines 23ff.

c. Salutation and advice to the present students: lines 60ff.

d. Address to classmates of 1825: lines 114ff.

(1) Words in memory of classmates dead: lines 114ff.

(2) Difficulty of speech in face of memory and emotion: lines 128ff.

(3) Fifty years of life described under the metaphor of a set of books: lines 148ff.

(4) A moral tale, from the Gesta Romanorum, story CVII: lines 170ff.

(a) Introduction: lines 170ff.

(b) The clerk and the treasure: lines 178ff.
(c) The moral of the allegory: lines 218ff.

(5) Application of the moral: lines 236ff.

(a) Much has been done by old men: lines 238ff.

(b) Age deprives men of power: lines 254ff.
(c) But there are opportunities in age which
every man should improve: lines 272ff.

The moral thought of the poem grows out of the story of the clerk. The clerk represents the scholar who, for worldly gain or ambition, forsakes his study, his simple life, his high ideals. Longfellow exhorts his classmates to keep up the life of the mind, scholastic interests and occupations till "the evening twilight" has faded quite away. This thought and exhortation remind us of Tennyson's lines (Ulysses, lines 50-59):