Close observers in Cambridge predicted last night that the University would spend a quiet Valentine's day.

But the Romans, who first gave February 14 a special significance, celebrated the day with a dine and dance routine. The event was called the Feast of Lupercalia. After several generations, the Romans stopped the annual merry-making and called it a day, Valentine's Day to be exact, after a martyred bishop of the same name.

The holiday was later saved from obscurity by romantic poets of the Renaissance. Recalling the practice of Roman bachelors of picking their dates for the day by drawing the names of maidens out of an urn, the poets somehow saw an excuse to deliver lace-splattered declarations to the lovers.

The custom found its way to England, where the versatile William Shakespeare saw fit to burlesque it. From the lips of the mad Ophelia in Hamlet, Act IV, Scene v, comes probably both the funniest and most ribald Valentine messaged over cooed.

Nowadays Valentine inscriptions are left to lesser poets, who generally write the same stuff year after year. Only one real innovation appeared in Square shops last week. This was a Valentine for politicians, which read:

You break your campaign promises,

You're full of If's and Maybe's,

Why don't you do some honest work,

Instead of kissing babies.

It remained for Paul Sack '48 to defeat the commercialism in the Valentine field. Sack, simple and primitive at heart, will present his would-be mato with a 200-pound granite tombstone with the words "To my Valentine, Paul" engraved on it.