Cranston High School - Cranstonian Yearbook (Cranston, RI)

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llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllml 'Y t''lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll '?,,,,.a Graduate Program for 1925 Recital Connectrcut March Andante from the Surprlse Symphony Norwegian Dance Nassann Hayden G neg Hrgh School Orchestra lnvocatlon by Reverend G Elmer Lamphere Songs by Class At Dawmng A Song of Indla 'The Earlxest Books Revxvals of Old Engllsh Customs Cadman Rrmsky Korsakoff Mxldred Moulton Latham Leah Marron Spencer Eloise Sprague Tabor Prano Selectlon Grande Marche de Concert by Wollenhaupt Chemxstry as an Ald to the Medxum George Francrs Rmgler and Louls Bertram Cook The Sea in English Poetry Elinor Margerum Song by Class Praise of Our Alma Mater Stewart Presentatxon of Gifts Two Year Graduates Dorxs Manton Taylor February Graduates John Joseph Martm June Graduates Raymond Elmer Jenkins Awardmg of Drplomas by Mayor Arthur A Rhodes March by Orchestra Trnsgxan March Losey Excused The Sea In Englrsh Poetry From tlme 1mmemor1al the sea has had a pecullar charm and fascrnatxon More than the fields the rocks and the mountalns lt has lmpressed 1tself upon hlm as a part of hrs life H has worshlpped lt as a god cursed xt as a monster loved lt for 1ts beauty Nlever has he treated If Wlth utter 1n difference 6 The Anglo Saxon race has ever been lntrmately and deeply concerned wrth the sea Thus one would expect to find Engllsh llterature filled wrth rnnumerable sea poems However strange as xt seems few poems unt11 the nmeteenth century had the sea as therr central figure In most of the verse of the early centurles the sea f Some Rhode. Island Shade Louise Hanson I I l . C I - 1 ll l

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MECHANICAL DRAWING LIBRARY I 15 1

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F511 . YJ QRANSTON was merely a background for tales about life upon it The Old English poems usually represented the ocean as awe inspiring and terrifying In an Anglo Saxon poem The Seafarer an old sailor emphasizes its coldness and cruelty He sings of the 1ce cold waves he ice cold sea he icy feathered birds and the 1ce chains that wulf the dangers and the treachery of the sea are prominent In telling of an adventure Beowulf says Thus we two were in the sea for the space of five nights t1ll the flood the tossing of waves coldest of Weathers drove us apart and a fierce north wind beat down upon us rough were the waves As time advanced there was no radical change in th1S poetry Poets did not as one would expect repre sent the sea as magnetic and 1rres1st1 ble drawing men forth to adventure Spenser seems 'to express the general feeling of his day in the Faerie Queen : Better safe port than be in seas distrest. Even the immortal Shakespeare sel- dom wrote of it. It came into his poetry usually incidentally. In The Tempest for example the sea was necessary just as in Othello Venice was necessary. As a lyric of the sea however, what could be more beau- tiful than Ariel's song in The Tem- pes ? Full fathom five thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. More often he cursed the sea than 7 praised it as again in The Tem pest we find Had I been any god of power I would Have sunk the sea within the earth or e er It should the good ship so have swallow d and The fraughting souls w1th1n her After the defeat of the Spanish Armada a wave of patr1ot1sm swept England Songs and poems sprang up everywhere praising England and th1s spirit IS shown 1n Bishop Stills The Spanish Armada Though cruel Spam and Parma With heathene legions come O God arise and arm us We ll die for owre home' But though the poets told of great deeds and of sailor life they still failed to write of the beauty and ap peal of the sea The time had not yet come when they felt that they dared to break away from the narrow limits set by their predecessors In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Romantic movement greatly changed English literature. Poetry broke away from the bonds of the previous centuries and became free natural and imaginative. With this change came a new appreciation of nature. Byron Coleridge Shelley Keats and Wordsworth describe the sea in most picturesque terms. Byron pictures its mystic charm in Childe Harold : There is society where none intrudes By the deep Sea, and music in its roar' I love not man the less, but Nature more. Keats describes it in a calm: Often 'tis in such a gentle temper found That scarcely will the smallest shell Be moved for days from where it sometime fell. Many poets have treated the sea as symbolic of the Creator's power. In Childe Harold we find: MllllllllllllllllllllllIlllllllllhl ' 5 lllllllllllllllIlllllllllllllllllllly 5, f ' ' ' O I 1 ' it 1 t .I ty tg . E fettered his feet. Again, in Beo- her Sailgfsf heroism-, Something, OE E t '