Battle-Retrospect, and Other Poems/Connecticut Hall

by Amos Niven Wilder

CONNECTICUT HALL.

Across cross the past's inviolable pale,
This loan, this freehold in antiquity,
Opens the portals of the old-time Yale,
Admits us to a vanished century,
Where we may live again the austere youth
And epic early hours of our land,
And pace the ancient yard with our uncouth
But Spartan-souled forefathers, hand in hand.
... That past shall sway the future and devour
These lean years cursed by avarice and decay;
Ay, from these very rooms went out the flower
Of a renewed New England yesterday
To a new Revolution, still the power
Of stern colonial ire to display.