Friends, Penn Staters, football fans, lend me your ears;
I come to bury JoePa, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
the good is oft interred with their bones;
so let it be with JoePa. The noble Trustee
hath told you JoePa was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
and grievously hath JoePa answer'd it.
Here, under leave of the Trustee and the rest--
for the Trustee is an honorable man.
So are they all, all honorable men--
come I to speak in JoePa's funeral.
He was my hero, faithful and just to me:
but the Trustee says he was ambitious;
and the Trustee is an honorable man.
He hath brought many trophies home to Happy Valley.
Whose ransoms did the libraries fill--
Did this in JoePa seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, JoePa hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet the Trustee says he was ambitious
and the Trustee is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a Pro Combat Crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet the Trustee says he was ambitious
and, sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what the Trustee spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts (named Sandusky),
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with JoePa,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
And who is the real Trustee?
