Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SPIRIT IS TRUE, by HARRY RANDOLPH BLYTHE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SPIRIT IS TRUE, by                    
First Line: Where is the old-time dartmouth, the dartmouth
Last Line: But the spirit is true in me and you though we be more spick and span.
Subject(s): Dartmouth College; Retrospection


WHERE is the old-time Dartmouth, the Dartmouth that once had been?
The sweatered race with its grizzly face, and the rawhide booted men?
From the campus it all has vanished as the snow that melts through night,
And now in its stead you hear the tread of the lads who are dressed "just
right."

Through the streets where a farmer's oxen once moved with a stately jar,
You may hear the whir and behold the blur of a passing motor-car;
And out in front of the Commons where the tides of youth still run,
You may estimate the fashion-plate as he gleams in the morning sun.

There are few who chew their tobacco, though some still follow the cards,
But in spite of the range of this great change, these men are as good old pards
As any who walked in rawhides in the long-lost days of old,
When the bearded boys with their corduroys were the keepers of the fold.

For whether in Eighteen-fifty, or whether in Nineteen-ten
You measure their fame, the heart is the same in all good Dartmouth men;
The march of the angel Progress has burnished the outer man,
But the spirit is true in me and you though we be more spick and span.





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