Quotemail Returns: Happy Academic New Year! :)

Hello everyone – 

Quotemail returns from a summertime hiatus on this first day of the fall semester at the University of Illinois! Today, we celebrate the arrival of the new academic year – and thousands of promising young scholars – with these two poems, which have had a profound impact on the ways in which I view the entirety of the academic enterprise. I invite you to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them – and to recommit yourself to lifelong learning, whatever your profession or stage of life might be.

And speaking of the academic enterprise – please be sure to visit my blog @ https://rhcfortnightlyquotemail.blogspot.com this Wednesday, August 23^rd, for a special Golden Jubilee celebration of my entry into kindergarten, fifty years ago this week! 😊

Editor’s Note

I recited the first three stanzas of this classic poem in February 2011, at the James Scholar Media Team’s fifth anniversary celebration. For me, these lines encapsulate the hopes and dreams of the rising generation of students, along with the responsibility that they carry with them, like every generation that has gone before: to leave the world a better place than they found it.

 

“Ode” (1874)

By Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy (1844-1881)

 

1. We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale Moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world forever, it seems.

 

2. With wonderful deathless ditties,

We build up the world’s great cities,

And out of a fabulous story,

We fashion an empire’s glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song’s measure

Can trample a kingdom down.

 

3. We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the Earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;

And overthrew them with prophesying

To the old of the new world’s worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth.

 

A new student (at left) is introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts in this fresco from the 1480s by the Italian Renaissance maestro, Sandro Botticelli. The Seven Liberal Arts are: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music, and Geometry.

 

Editor’s Note

                In 1959, the University of Illinois had chosen to name its new flagship Honors Programs after Dr. Edmund J. James, the fourth President of the University of Illinois. Five years ago, I was researching James Scholar history in preparation for the Diamond Jubilee (60^th anniversary) of the ACES James Scholar Honors Program. I was assisted in my research by my intrepid padawan-learner, Megan Finfrock. While we were in the midst of reviewing archival materials and conducting interviews with local experts, Megan was able to locate the gravesite of President James in the Mount Hope Cemetery in Urbana.

                We visited the gravesite on November 2, 2018 (All Souls’ Day, appropriately enough), and I read the following poem out loud as we stood there reflecting on President James’ legacy of academic excellence. It was a very moving experience for me, one that will stay with me for a long time yet to come. It’s amazing to think that the legacy of a great leader who served the University with distinction over 100 years ago inspired the creation of the James Scholar Honors Programs that I’ve been involved with for more than two decades.

 

“A Psalm of Life”

(What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist)

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

 

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

 

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

Find us farther than today.

 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

 

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

 

Trust no Future, however pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act — act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God overhead!

 

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

 

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing over life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

 

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

 

Dr. Edmund J. James (1855-1925) was the fourth President of the University of Illinois from 1904 to 1920. This photo appeared in the 1912 edition of the Illio yearbook. (Photo Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Requiescat in potestate, Demarchus Jacomus!

Rest in power, President James!

 

Unti l next time –

Rob 😊