Two
Scholars
come in.
Longfellow
He goes out. Two Doctors come in disputing, and followed by
pupils.
DOCTOR SERAFINO.
I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain,
That a word which is only conceived in the brain
Is a type of eternal Generation;
The spoken word is the Incarnation.
DOCTOR CHERUBINO.
What do I care for the Doctor Seraphic,
With all his wordy chaffer and traffic?
DOCTOR SERAFINO.
You make but a paltry show of resistance;
Universals have no real existence!
DOCTOR CHERUBINO.
Your words are but idle and empty chatter;
Ideas are eternally joined to matter!
DOCTOR SERAFINO.
May the Lord have mercy on your position,
You wretched, wrangling culler of herbs!
DOCTOR CHERUBINO.
May he send your soul to eternal perdition,
For your Treatise on the Irregular verbs!
They rush out fighting.
Two Scholars come in.
FIRST SCHOLAR.
Monte Cassino, then, is your College.
What think you of ours here at Salern?
SECOND SCHOLAR.
To tell the truth, I arrived so lately,
I hardly yet have had time to discern.
So much, at least, I am bound to acknowledge:
The air seems healthy, the buildings stately,
And on the whole I like it greatly.
FIRST SCHOLAR.
Yes, the air is sweet; the Calabrian hills
Send us down puffs of mountain air;
And in summer-time the sea-breeze fills
With its coolness cloister, and court, and square.
Then at every season of the year
There are crowds of guests and travellers here;
Pilgrims, and mendicant friars, and traders
From the Levant, with figs and wine,
And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders,
Coming back from Palestine.
SECOND SCHOLAR.
And what are the studies you pursue?
What is the course you here go through?
FIRST SCHOLAR.
The first three years of the college course
Are given to Logic alone, as the source
Of all that is noble, and wise, and true.
SECOND SCHOLAR.
