The Class Ode for 1968

The Class of 1968, has shown that it, like so many Harvard classes before it, is a gifted class. We have attacked our extra-curricular escapes with the same success. But to say that our talent indicates our state of mind is to ignore the truth. We have been a disheartening state of human affairs, confronting, especially in the last year,

I speak not only of war, poverty, and racial injustice, though these are the most painful issues, but also of the disaffection of our own generation and the polarization, the pig-headedness and refusal to confront the real problems on both sides of so many conflicts international and local.

Above all I refer to the violence with which these issues seem irretrievably bound up and to the headlong frenzy with which our country pursues its ambiguous destiny.

We are not so juvenile as to think that we are the first Harvard class to face human problems, but neither are we so unrealistically sanguine that we could say, "We will march forward, armed with our Harvard education and clean up the mess."

This is not to say that we are without hope. We have hope; but we have been and we still are deeply troubled. To gloss over this fact or to speak glibly about it would be dishonest both to ourselves and to those who are still "in charge".

Ode: 1968

Fair Harvard, your jubilee mass meets once more

In a churchyard where scholars are blessed:

But the graduate faces that should augur bliss

Are sober and braced for a test.

Our ritual laughter is stifled and bleak;

Our headiness fades with its cry.

On this day, like others, we ponder a war

Where friends died and more friends will die.

Fair Harvard, your sons are unsure of themselves

As they step through your dignified gate.

Wise prophets to whom they appeal for a word

Are silenced by bullets and hate.

The nation that greets us is tortured and sick

And mouths inarticulate cures.

We pray for the spirit to cope with a world

Where so very little assures.