I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been delighted to find a whole bunch of Santayana stuff at archive.org, including a poetry collection I was unfamiliar with.
Well, while in Boston, I’ve been using stolen moments to work my way through that collection. I haven’t made much headway with the initial sections–there’s a two-part 80-pager there that will need more than a few stolen moments–but I have been enjoying the shorter works in the Convivial And Occasional Verses section at the end. It’s kind of fun to look at the shorter, and expressly more jovial works.
Please allow me to present, and then comment on one of the works from that section:
COLLEGE DRINKING SONG
As we say good-bye at the parting ways,
Let us sing together a song of praise,
Let us drink a toast to our college days,
To the walks through a world made for you and me,
To the boisterous farce and the echoing glee
To the wonderful A and the dreadful E,
Drink, boys, drink !To the games we won and the games we lost,
For we could n’t tell which before we tossed,
And who cares now who paid the cost?
To the woman’s love that came and went,
To the good wine drunk and the money spent,
To the night-long foolish argument,
Drink, boys, drink !To the times when men were men indeed,
To our fathers youth and our mothers creed,
And to every faith that may succeed,
To the after age and the later tongue
That will ring the changes we have rung
And sing the songs we have left unsung,
Drink, boys, drink !When the eye is dull and the hand is cold,
Then should the pocket be full of gold,
For no one will love us when we’re old.
So to vulgar gold and what it gets
And an honest end to all our debts,
For an old wine softens old regrets,
Drink, boys, drink !When we are asleep beneath grey stone,
Our children’s lives shall repeat our own,
For the light remains though the days be flown.
To the opening buds of this ended May,
And to all sweet things that will not stay,
And to every dog that has had his day,
Drink, boys, drink !
A pretty appropriate choice for this week, given that I’m down here hanging around Santayana’s alma mater.
Most of the poem I’m pretty pleased with, and there’s at least two sections of it that I will totally pull out and use for toasting.
Let’s do a little stanza-by-stanza breakdown of my responses, and see if they match or complement your own…
As we say good-bye at the parting ways,
Let us sing together a song of praise,
Let us drink a toast to our college days,
To the walks through a world made for you and me,
To the boisterous farce and the echoing glee
To the wonderful A and the dreadful E,
Drink, boys, drink !
First off, just let me say that I’m all for any drinking song that’s in the AAABBB-and-then-drink-damnit! structure.
I’m actually a little confused by the inital verse–is this a song for the end of college and the beginning of the subsequent life, or is this a song for the end of any get together of lads from the old school? The ‘parting of the ways’ bit definitely suggests that it’s for the end of something, but given the rest of the work you could easily read it either way, I think.
Also, the “wonderful A and the dreadful E”? I assume that A for Arts and E for something else, and that “A&E” was a contemporary term. Honestly I’m not sure what that E would be for–probably not “entertainment” which is what pops into my head thanks to Trivial Pursuit and cable TV, but maybe “education”? Or maybe even “engineering”? Anyone know? A cusory Googling for “A&E” as a term associated with Harvard didn’t turn up anything helpful.
To the games we won and the games we lost,
For we could n’t tell which before we tossed,
And who cares now who paid the cost?
To the woman’s love that came and went,
To the good wine drunk and the money spent,
To the night-long foolish argument,
Drink, boys, drink !
I do like the idea of drinking to the spirit of gaming, regardless of the outcome of the games. I still wonder about that “who cares now” bit, though–is it “now that we’re done college” or “now that we’re much older and looking back”?
I believe I will at some point in the near future use the second half of that stanza as a toast. “To the women’s love that came and went, to the good wine drunk and the money spent, to the night-long foolish argument!” All things worthy of a toast, I’d say.
To the times when men were men indeed,
To our fathers youth and our mothers creed,
And to every faith that may succeed,
To the after age and the later tongue
That will ring the changes we have rung
And sing the songs we have left unsung,
Drink, boys, drink !
I’m also a bit confused about that second line. Are we drinking to the things our fathers got up to in their youth, or to their maintaining their youth? Given the repeating theme of generational continuity, I would think we’re drinking to the fact that our fathers were once themselves in the place we are now–which would seem to suggest a reading of “parting of the ways” as “at the end of college” rather than later in life. Maybe not though, since wherever we are on the generational curve, it’s true that our fathers were here before us.
And what creed of our mothers are we drinking to? I suspect it’s meant to be their professed faith in us, not in any religion, but then I’m a cocky atheist. Opinions?
I’m going to read that third line as “every thing we believe in, that comes through for us”, rather than “every religion that manages to get converts” 🙂 I suspect that reading is rather more what Santayana meant.
The second half here can be read as both a positive and negative thing–a recognition that we, and our generation, can neither do everything nor continue indefinitely, but coupled with a faith that there will be subsequent generations that can carry on the traditions, and that will be influenced by us and our lives. This one’s hitting me where I live, as my daughter gets older.
When the eye is dull and the hand is cold,
Then should the pocket be full of gold,
For no one will love us when we’re old.
So to vulgar gold and what it gets
And an honest end to all our debts,
For an old wine softens old regrets,
Drink, boys, drink !
So I read the first half of that as “you shouldn’t bother saving money when you’re young–you can do that when you are old and alone, and unable to appreciate the joys of money ‘misused’ in youth”. I can buy that–that’s kind of how I’ve lived my life to some exent, but I bet my wife won’t sign up for it.
The second half I read not as melancholy, but as positive: once we’ve outgrown the things we should be enjoying now, we can settle down to getting “vulgar gold”, and putting right the debts we rang up in our wild youth. And, if it turns out that in our wild youth we did (or didn’t do) one or two things we regret, well in we can sofen those regrets in retrospect. I think there’s a hint of Whittier in there–better to have been wild, even with a few regrets to sofen, than to be haunted by the things that might have been.
When we are asleep beneath grey stone,
Our children’s lives shall repeat our own,
For the light remains though the days be flown.
To the opening buds of this ended May,
And to all sweet things that will not stay,
And to every dog that has had his day,
Drink, boys, drink !
Again we come back to the “even though we die, the cycle (and presumably the college) will continue”. I like that notion, especially given that Santayana is Mr. Learn From History Or Be Trapped–so you can assume he’s not saying that all cycles will continue, but just the “light” remains. In the context of a college song, you can read that “light” as “illumination”, and assume that it ties into the glorious ideal of the university as the storehouse of knowledge and culture.
And the last part of this stanza, and the poem, is definitely something I’m going to steal for a toast. “To all sweet things that will not stay, and to every dog that has had his day!” Maybe it’s not as much of a crowd-pleaser as some of Big Johnny‘s toasts, but it’ll do. It’ll definitely do.
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