When they jumped down from the train through the steam
you could tell them by the way they looked around,
puzzled shirtsleeved, raw young men in groups
with their bags roped and battered beside them,
adventuring here to the new university
over there where the sandstone sparkles
in the brilliant September sunshine,
as bright as ideas flashing in curious minds.
The townspeople gathered, helping and joking
with the boys, and respectful with the few girls,
this first class, students at Stanford’s free school,
a bold western place of rough hewn scholarship,
risky studious encounters with argument
and thought and challenge, coming up
against regal professors from the East, scholars
out here for the money,
wondering, would it last,
tough and bright and angry, eager
for these arrivals, ready to test
and shape them,
to build with them one by one,
like the blocks of sandstone.
From Rings of Growth: Poems Celebrating Palo Alto’s 100 Years, by Ryland Kelley, ’49
