Cranston High School - Cranstonian Yearbook (Cranston, RI)

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Roll on thou deep and dark blue Ocean ro Y Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee m vain Stops with the shore Tennyson in Crossing the Bar pictures death as a Journey across the sea from this earth into the hereafter and God as the Pilot who guides the ship Sunset and evening star And one clear call for mel And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea But such a tide as moving seems asleep Too full for sound and foam When that which drew from out the bound less deep Turns again home Twilight and evening bell And after that the dark' And may there be no sadness of farewell When I embark For tho from out our bourne of time and place The flood may bear me far I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. Strange to say the best poetry of the ninteenth century was written by men of little or no experience on the ocean. With the possible exception of Falconer no sailor-poet can corn- pare with such men as Coleridge, Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, who knew little of life on the water. How commonplace Falconer's Ship- wreck seems when it is contrasted with that masterpiece, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The ice was here, the ice was there. The ice was all around: It cracked and growled and roared and howled, - Like noises in a swound! And again when he describes the calm: 18 Day after day day after day We stuck nor breath nor motion As idle as a painted ship The twentieth century has pro duced innumerable poets and an ever increasing variety of these poems Stevenson Kipling Noyes and Maselield have preserved in poetry the traditions and superstitions that are dying out with the old time sailing vessel They have brought out the romance of the sea the eternal beauty and mysterious power that will ever draw men to it Gradually the sailor IS Winning a place as a poet Kipling and Mase field have both had experience on ships Both have written excellently of this life The restless longing and hunger for the sea and the very rhythm of the sea itself are heard in John Masefield s Sea Fever I must down to the seas again to the lonely sea and the sky And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by the wheels kick and the winds song and the white sails shaking a grey mist on the sea s face and grey dawn breaking. And And I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide wild call and a clear call that may not be denied: And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, the flung spray and the blown spume. and the sea gulls crying. Isa And I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gulls' way and the whales' way. where the wind's like a whetted knife: And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laugh- ing fellow-rover. a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over. And Xllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll ' 5 atlllllIlllllllllllllllllllllllllllll , C: ' ' ' O

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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 '

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NWI!IIIIIIHHMIIZIIIIIHNIIIIII Q66 AMllilllllllllIIIIIHIIIIIIIIIIWI E fi----A Class of 1926 CLASS MOTTO No quest no conquest CLASS OFFICERS February J une Pres: dent KINGSLEY READ HELENA HOGAN Vzce Prestdent ISABELL DANERER SYDNEY BUNKER Secretary ELSA MAERTENS WILLIAM SCHOFIELD Treasurer ERLING OWREN EDWIN FARRELL Chazrman of Executzve Commzttee MILTON PATTERSON HOWARD HODSDON Representative Student Counctl AUDREY WATSON SYDNEY BUNKER Il91 Q6 ' , N 1- ,W