Cap and Gown

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Title: Cap and Gown
A Treasury of College Verse
Author: Selected by Frederic Knowles
Release Date: January 4, 2004 [EBook #10596]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CAP AND GOWN
A Treasury of College Verse
Selected by
Frederic Lawrence Knowles
_Editor of "The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics," etc.
1897
TO THE?REVERED MEMORY?OF A?GREAT SCHOLAR AND GREAT TEACHER?WHOM I WAS ONCE PROUD?TO CALL MY FRIEND,
Frances James Child,
THIS LITTLE BOOK?IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED.
_In "Cap and Gown" you look in vain?For epic or heroic strain.?Not ours to scale the heights sublime,?Which hardly masters dare to climb;?We only sing of youth and joy,?And love,--the credo of the boy!_
PREFATORY NOTE
The gay verses which celebrate undergraduate life must not be taken too seriously. They seldom pretend to the dignity of poetry. College verse, if I understand it, is verse suited to the period and point of view of undergraduate days. Light, graceful, humorous, sparkling,--this it should be for the most part; serious sometimes, it is true,--for young men and women about to take upon themselves the responsibilities of mature life are at heart by no means frivolous, but touching the note of grief, if at all, almost as though by accident. Life is often sad enough in the after-years, and for the period of sorrow, sad verse may be in place. Happy they who have not yet traded cap and bells (never far hidden under cap and gown) for the
"Sable stole of cypress lawn."
Happier still if they never need make such a sorry exchange.
Yes, like all sound art, college verse must, above all else, be honest. Let us not say, however, that the thoughtful moods of young men and women may not sincerely be set to the music of verse. One department in this collection bears the name "In Serious Mood," and its sentiment rings as true as that of any other.
In looking over very many undergraduate papers, I have been struck with several facts. I will give them for what they are worth, leaving their explanation to others. First, there seems to be a general fondness for the sonnet, and a very general lack of success in writing it. Second, the French forms of light verse are exceedingly popular--particularly the rondeau, ballade, and triolet. These, more easily lending themselves to gay moods than does the sonnet, are written with much greater success. Triolets are perhaps least often, rondeaus most often, successful. Third, purely sentimental verse is little written in women's colleges, its place being taken by poetry of nature or of reflection. Oddly enough, when it is attempted, the writer usually fancies herself the lover, and describes feminine, not masculine, beauty. College girls show possibly more maturity of reflective power than do their brothers, but they are notably weaker in the sense of humor. Fourth, amongst so much merely graceful verse, there are not wanting touches here and there of genuine poetry. I shall be disappointed if the reader does not discover many such in this little book.
While I have confined myself, for the most part, to verse printed in the college publications of the past five years, I have overstepped this limit in a few instances. None of the poems in the present book, however, were included in the first series published in 1892.
Thanks are due Messrs. Andrus & Church, of Ithaca, N.Y., for their generous loan of bound files of the Cornell Era, to the assistant librarian of Harvard University for numerous courtesies, and to the editors of many college papers, without whose kind cooperation the second series of "Cap and Gown" would have been impossible.
F.L.K.
COLLEGE PUBLICATIONS REPRESENTED.
AMHERST COLLEGE Amherst Literary Monthly, The.
BALTIMORE, WOMAN'S COLLEGE OF Kalends, The.
BOWDOIN COLLEGE Bowdoin Orient, The.
Bowdoin Quill, The.

BROWN UNIVERSITY Brown Magazine, The.
Brunonian, The.

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE Bryn Mawr Lantern, The.
CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY University of California Magazine.
CHICAGO UNIVERSITY University of Chicago Weekly, The.
COLGATE