Epigram For The Beginning Of Freshman Year

"Oh lovely Pussy! Oh Pussy my love,
"What a beautiful Pussy you are . . ."
---Edward Lear, "The Owl And The Pussycat"

 

You have come here to learn more, not less:

more to the sex than the pudendal;
more to love than the sex;
more to yourself than your flesh desires;
more to your mind than what you have not yet learned

if not conceded to the unlearned;

more than the song, its harmony;
more than the verse, its poetry;
more than the past, its history;
more than the future, your destiny;

more than the present, your equilibrium;
more than life's calculations, its sum;

more to live full (the half not yet told)
according to the measure your faith can hold.

The accomplishment of an education
is not in the degreed graduation,
but---right to the last breath---appreciation.

Author's Notes/Comments: 

I woke with the core words of this poem at about 4am this morning.

During my own time at college, September 9, 1976, to June 7, 1980, I often remarked that the epigraph above, a couple of lines by Edward Lear, seemed to be the both the vision statement and the mission statement (to use that degraded dialect of English called business-speak) of most of the males who came to our campus. I suspect it is the same everywhere, in every time.

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