Emmerich Manual High School - Ivian Yearbook (Indianapolis, IN)

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MIND AND HAND. L7 ADVANCED PHYSICAL LABORATORY. I North Half.) THE POETICAL. THE practical and the poetical are not opposed in their tendencies. It is ab- surd to hold that the thoughts that inspire in us reverence for the Creator and Uis mighty works, can not be turned to our material and moral advantage. Love for the poetical is but an appreciation of beauty and fundamentally a general love of nature. Before proceeding further, however, we must distinguish between the poetical per- son and the dreamer. The poetic person does not love nature less than the dreamer, but result and progression more. In no way can this be better illustrated than through the impressions members from these classes would receive from anything beautiful or poetical. Suppose, for exam pie, that three persons, a poet, an engineer and a dreamer, should view an aged oak. The engineer would note with what firm- ness it was rooted and how sturdily it withstood the blast, and straightway would enter into his mind some application of this principle that for ages to come would stand as a monument to his usefulness. The poet would notice the parasites that clung to its massive trunk, and be inspired to write of our relation to and dependence upon a Su- preme power. The dreamer would gaze as intentlj as the rest, and his only thought

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L6 MIND AND HAND. ' ,URING the days, when the windows of the sky are swept clearly open and radi- antly blue, when the leaves, winch have jeal- ously clung to the stem all winter, now yield and drop at last, when they have fallen to travel from field to field, then the woodland songsters re- turn. In the middle of February comes the robin, who but heralds the approaching members of feathered emigrants. Poor lonely creature, his ruddy breast gleams warmly amid the bare boughs ; he is wait- ing for his paler-vested mate who will have much news to relate, a month later. Pressing upon the footsteps of the robin will come the croaking blackbird, and the red-headed woodpecker will again be seen in his accustomed haunts, prying among dead trees with a thoughtful eye to future stronghold within. Some frosty morning in March the wee hill of the chipping sparrow will ring out with renewed charm. His small person is perched demurely within the gloom of the cedar where he means to have a nest anon, while his cousin, a shy little song-bird with brown stripes, will drop into the stubble with a flirt of white tail-feathers, and the vesper sparrow has registered for the sum- mer. One morning during early April, when just awake, the apple tree by your window will be filled with a brisk bit of song — sweet, sweeter, sweet — ringing in decisive small tones, and, like a glint of summer sunlight, the tiny big eyed summer yellow- bird chips confidently through the branches. He has come to stay. As the middle of April approaches, many distinguished visitors arrive. The white-eyed vireo, whose strange white iris foretells how snappily his song will ring in your ears — tu-whit, tu-wheeo ! Many days it will sound mockingly from the other side of the creek, from the far side of the wood, from the valley below, from the hill above, before the singer will disclose his identity to any but old friends. April is not over yet but there will eome a morning whose breath will speak of June, in the voices of the yellow-breast, mellow, round, clear and loud — pritty, pritty, pritty. Soon young bluebirds are fluttering their unwonted wings, baby song-sparrows are being tended, and towsled, young robins have quitted the nest to look like ragged, overfed babies trotting closely after father and mother. One tiny nest is full of naked young field sparrows, their wee dimensions almost transparent. All the birds are at home. May has come and with it a new generation, which fitly ends the chronicle of the old. Alexis Many, 11 B, English.

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is MIND AND HANI). would be a speculation as to what the leaves appeared to be whispering to each other. The engineer has given to the world a de- vice of universal usefulness ; the poet a soul- inspiring poem, and the dreamer — nothing. Our greatest achievements (poetic, scien- tific, social and political), have been accom- plished through a love and study of nature and her many forms. Our greatest poets have received their brightest inspirations from nature, but they did not deal with impossible sentimental nonseuse,but rather with the motives, the passions, and a uni- versal study of mankind. Our greatest scientific and mechanical results have been but adopted from nature. Our great social and political advancement but illustrates, though in a small degree, the unity and obedience to law that exists throughout the universe. Thus we see that the men that have done the most for mankind were the most poetic. It is also apparent that the dreamer has not the true poetic instinct. Our great men have not been dreamers, but useful, moving members of an advancing civilization. Nature is a subject for our admiration and love, but only through the medium of useful speculation This great universe, in all its perfection and unity was not created a subject for the play of an idle imagina- tion, but for our elevation and good. Hubert Hildebrakd Rogers, 11 A, English. ADVANCED PHYSICAL LABORATORY. (South Half.