A Salute to Hovey
Richard Hovey '85 was born 100 years ago on May 4, 1864. Son of a Dartmouth father and father to poetry that sings of a place and a spirit that is uniquely Dartmouth, Hovey bequeathed to generations of Dartmouth's sons a legacy of manly sentiment. Men of Dartmouth, EleazarWheelock, Hanover Winter Song belong anew to each freshman class.
Baker Library will be the focal point of the College's commemoration of this 100th anniversary of Hovey's birth. A major exhibition relating to the poet's career and a reading of his poetry are planned.
With Hovey's own poetry the ALUMNI MAGAZINE honors the man who has been called "Dartmouth's Laureate":
Daughter of the woods and hills, Dartmouth, my stern, Rock-boned and wind-blown sibyl of the snows! First in thy praise whom we can never praise Enough, I lay my laurel in my turn Before thee in thy uplands. No one goes Forth from thy granite through the summer days. And many a land of apple and of rose, Keeping in his heart more faithfully than I The love of thy grim hills and northern sky.
Mother of Webster! Mother of men! Being great, Be greater; let the honor of thy past, For which we sit in festival, elate, Be but the portent of thy larger fate, The adumbration of a deed more vast. With eyes upon the future, thou and we Shall better celebrate the past we praise, And in the pledge of unaccomplished days Find a new joy thrill through our pride in thee.
—Part II from Dartmouth Ode
THE OLD PINE
It stood upon the hill like some old chief, And held communion with the cryptic wind, Keeping like some dim unforgotten grief The memory of the tribesmen autumn-skinned, Silent and slow as clouds, whose footing passed Down the remote trails of oblivion Long since into the caverns of the past.
Alone, aloof, strong fellow of the sun, We chose it for our standard in its prime, Nor - though no longer grimly from its hill It fronts the world, like Webster - wind nor time Has felled its austere ghost, we see it still, In alien lands, resurgent and undying Flag of our hearts, from sudden ramparts flying.
