From Nuntius vol. VI, no. 3, May 1932.
Homer
by Katherine D. Schmidt, Gamma
As one who marks the rosy-fingered Dawn
Sweep back the eastern curtain of the day;
As one who travels over Phoebus’ way,
Or dwells with those the gods have smiled upon;
As one who sails upon unvintaged seas,
And watches from afar Troy’s bloody plain;
As one who fights the tumult of the main
With shattered oars, and longs for storms to cease;
So enter we this temple of the mind,
And hear and feel its music, loud and free;
With such a sense of Life’s reality
We read the songs of Homer, bard divine;
Untouched by art of man he glows afar
Lonely and grand and proud as Chronos’ mightiest star!
To Vergil
by Professor Earl LeV. Crum, Alpha Epsilon
‘Tis not the poet’s native land
Nor varied rimes at his command
That brings him to renown;
But if the verse has stirred man’s soul
And fired imagination’s role,
He’s won the poet’s crown.
Vergilius Maro, Siron taught,
Whose poems were sublimely wrought
And based on Grecian lore,
Raised Latin to its loftiest plane
From whence the bards will ever gain
Their themes as heretofore.
He gave the pastoral to Rome,
Depicted shepherds, flocks, and home
Where man is free from strife;
A prophet of a golden age
When war shall ever cease to gauge
The sphere of human life.
His love of nature is displayed
When in didactic garb arrayed,
In old Ascraean strain,
He sings of crops and care of trees
Of raising cattle and of bees
With philosophic vein.
In epic verse the poet brought
To Rome a Trojan argonaut,
Aeneas, sent by fate
To glorify the Julian race,
Set forth Augustus’ rightful place,
And laud the Roman state.