The Yellow and Blue

He was motivated to write the song in hopes of winning a $20 prize from the student editors of the yearbook (The Palladium).

These "ribbons that nature has spun" reminded him, too, of "the maid of the golden hair, and eyes that are brimming with blue."

Next Gayley chose a soft, wistful melody called "Pirates' Chorus" from The Enchantress, an opera by the Irish composer Michael William Balfe.

Gayley returned to Ann Arbor from time to time, and in 1925, near the end of a long life, he wrote: "It has always been a great joy to me, revisiting Ann Arbor, to hear the song still sung in fraternity houses, and on the campus in the twilight.

A song written in the days of one's youth, if it by good luck expresses the emotion and enthusiasm of succeeding generations of young men and women, is a thousand times more worthwhile than many books of learning."