By Edwin H. Lewis, 1894
(copyright expired a long time ago)

I think this is the ONLY place you can find this piece on the web!
Also, I have fixed the capitalization and punctuation problems in the Convocation edition.
Adam Kissel

See below for the original words of the Alma Mater        |        Also see: Chicago songs

Today we gladly sing the praise
     Of her whose daughters and whose sons
Now loyal voices proudly raise
     To bless her with our benisons.
Of all fair mothers fairest she,
     Most wise of all that wisest be,
Most true of all the true say we,
     Is our dear Alma Mater.

Her mighty learning we would tell,
     Tho' life is something more than lore;
She could not love her children well,
     Loved she not truth and honor more.
We praise her breadth of charity,
     Her faith that truth shall make us free,
That right shall live eternally,
     We praise our Alma Mater.

The City White hath fled the earth,
     But where the azure waters lie,
A nobler city hath its birth,
     The City Gray that ne'er shall die.
For decades and for centuries,
     Its battlemented tow'rs shall rise,
Beneath the hope-filled western skies,
     'Tis our dear Alma Mater.

To-day we gladly sing the praise
     Of her who owns us as her sons;       (NOTE)
Our loyal voices let us raise,
     And bless her with our benisons.
Of all fair mothers, fairest she,
     Most wise of all that wisest be,
Most true of all the true say we,
     Is our dear Alma Mater.

Her mighty learning we would tell,
     Tho' life is something more than lore;
She could not love her sons so well,
     Loved she not truth and honor more.
We praise her breadth of charity,
     Her faith that truth shall make men free,
That right shall live eternally,
     We praise our Alma Mater.

The City White hath fled the earth,
     But where the azure waters lie,
A nobler city hath its birth,
     The City Gray that ne'er shall die.
For decades and for centuries,
     Its battlemented tow'rs shall rise,
Beneath the hope-filled western skies,
     'Tis our dear Alma Mater.

"Every night, five minutes after 10:00 o'clock, its melody floated out over the quadrangles from the Alice Freeman Palmer chimes in Mitchell Tower" (452). This practice was memorialized in verse ("To Chicago," by Janet Tyler Flanner).

Lewis himself wrote of this line that it "is the worst in the English Language" (452).