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The coat without a seam, and other poems cover

The coat without a seam, and other poems

Chapter 35: ON THE SINGING OF “GAUDEAMUS IGITUR”
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About This Book

This collection of lyric and narrative poems moves between wartime urgency and reflective peace, offering sonnets, elegies, and short lyrics that interrogate sacrifice, patriotism, and the yearning for reconciliation. Voices range from public banners and martial images to intimate meditations on grief, domestic memory, and nature. Frequent religious and moral imagery frames contemplations of duty, loss, and the possibility of a unified humanity. Formal variety includes sonnet sequences and freer lyrics, often balancing didactic rhetoric with tender observation to consider how communities and individuals reckon with conflict, remembrance, and the promise of healing.

ON THE SINGING OF “GAUDEAMUS IGITUR”

Hark, how Youth, a scholar gowned,
With the cap of Wisdom crowned,
Carols like the reckless lark,
Forgetful of the dark!
What is toil, oh, what are tears?
Time turns pale when thus he hears
Angelic insolence of sound
Scorning the beaten ground.
In the face of Fate is flung
This gage-gauntlet of the young—
Innocent brave challenge, hurled
In the teeth of the world!
Graybeard Years file solemn past;
Yet this rebel glee shall last
Long as souls at morning rise,
New larks, to the old skies.