Fair Harvard

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"Fair Harvard" is the alma mater of Harvard University. Written by the Reverend Samuel Gilman of the class of 1811 for the university's 200th anniversary in 1836, it bids the school an affectionate farewell. Of its four verses, the first and fourth are traditionally sung and the second and third omitted.

The song is set to a traditional Irish air, best known in early 19th century America as "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms", a popular song whose lyrics were written by the Irish poet Thomas Moore. The tune is occasionally wrongly credited to Sir William Davenant, whose library may have been a source of the music for later publishers.^[1] (The tune is also a newer setting of "My Lodging Is In The Cold, Cold Ground".) Horatio Alger Jr., an 1852 graduate of Harvard's Divinity School, composed his "Harvard Odes" I-IV, and Paul Laurence Dunbar originally wrote the lyrics of the "Tuskegee Song", to the tune.

The song is referenced in The Simpsons episode “The Front”.^[2]