The island of Penikese in Buzzard's Bay was given by Mr. John
Anderson to Agassiz for the uses of a summer school of natural
history. A large barn was cleared and improvised as a lecture-room.
Here, on the first morning of the school, all the company was
gathered. "Agassiz had arranged no programme of exercises," says
Mrs. Agassiz, in Louis Agassiz; his Life and Correspondence,
"trusting to the interest of the occasion to suggest what might best
be said or done. But, as he looked upon his pupils gathered there
to study nature with him, by an impulse as natural as it was
unpremeditated, he called upon then to join in silently asking
God's blessing on their work together. The pause was broken by the
first words of an address no less fervent than its unspoken
prelude." This was in the summer of 1873, and Agassiz died the
December following.
On the isle of Penikese,
Ringed about by sapphire seas,
Fanned by breezes salt and cool,
Stood the Master with his school.
Over sails that not in vain
Wooed the west-wind's steady strain,
Line of coast that low and far
Stretched its undulating bar,
Wings aslant along the rim
Of the waves they stooped to skim,
Rock and isle and glistening bay,
Fell the beautiful white day.
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