So I feel much freer in the classroom now, and I’m more inclined to let the literature—especially the poetry—speak a good deal for itself, in conversation with my students. For this to happen, one needs very fine students. Bright, yes. But also with considerable ability to understand human beings and experience, since reading literature requires that—a good ear, a relish for words and rhythms and a feel for syntax.

In all these respects, Harvard undergraduates are ideal. They usually have real knowledge and passion. They want to engage, if one will only let them. They are not afraid to ask questions, to risk interpretations, to read poems aloud and to listen. So my finest experiences since 1991 teaching (briefly) lyric poetry to first-year students at Harvard have been whipped cream on top of chocolate cake. For those who wonder whether education is alive and well, or who question whether the future will be in good hands, I exhort them to come, to watch and to listen to our students.

In sum, choose your addictions carefully. Notice the space you live in, and think about its possible meanings. Engage with some significant works of literature—defined in the broadest sense to include really any field of study: when you are directly in touch with profound writing and thought, when you are talking in an engaged way with others about such work, then you are likely to feel completely alert, alive and enlarged. And that is education.

Neil L. Rudenstine is the twenty-sixth president of Harvard University.