Hope High School - Blue and White Yearbook (Providence, RI)

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i 59 ie . I5 .' ly W F-I Anthony Medal Winner BARBARA YOUNG Wlly I Like Poetry By BARBARA YOUNG My love for poetry began in the misty, half- forgotten days of my childhood when my mother, who had a deeply poetic nature, used to take me on her lap and recite to me for hours on end. I do not think I understood what she was saying, but that was not important. I would lie in her arms and listen, my eyes fixed on her lovely, young face, and I would be content. The world was a wonderful, magical place, and. even today. poetry recalls again a little of the beautiful peace I knew as a listening child in my moth- er's arms. Just as I find poetry a link to my happy childhood, I think of it also as binding me to even more remote times and places. Sometimes, when I read. I think of all the others who have sat, just as I am sitting. and read and dreamed and wondered as I do now. At other times my vision turns ahead, and I realize that many years from now, others will love and think about these poems as I do now, There is a timeless- ness in such beauty, a power so strong that it makes past and future one. and, as I read. a little of that power comes to me. and I feel a part of all people and all times. A sort of immortality is mine. One of the most extraordinary qualities of poetry is its power to create emotions and visions in the readers. How could a person read The Bells and fail to hear their sound and to sense the messages, both beautiful and Twelve horrifying, which they convey? Could even the cold- est person read A'Two Locks of Hair without feeling a thrill of pity in his heart? Do not the pain and sor- row of The Ballad of Reading Goal seem to become the reader's own? How could lVIilton's sonnets fail to impress, or Shakespeares to delight? A whole new world of emotional experience lies waiting to be dis- covered in the reading of poetry. Poetry holds, too, a fascination for the intellect. Many of the world's greatest thinkers have written thzir ideals and philosophies into poetry. To read th ir works is not only a joy for the aesthetic senses but a wonderful experience in thinking as well, for it allows you to watch the mind of genius at work. It combines beauty and knowledge, the rarest and most precious combination on earth. What are all these things for which I search in poetry? I search for childhoods peace-the security of my mother's arms around me and her soft voice speaking words that sang themselves like melodies. I search for beauty so vital that it still lives on long years after its creators have ceased to be. I search for the wonder of words, -tremulous and beautiful, guided by man's mastery into paths and patterns of perfection. In no other form of literature can I find so much beauty and satisfaction. In no other form of literature can I End so much joy.

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Hope Service Award '. - W KI EUDA BILLER HARRY FRADIN Dennis Scholastic Award GERRY NEUGEBAUER The highest awards that Hope High School presents to indi- viduals in each graduating class are the Charles E. Dennis, Jr. Award for scholastic excellence and the Hope Service Award for outstanding service to the school. The Dennis Scholastic Award was instituted in January, l939, and the Hope Service Award in January, 1947. Eleven

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ClR1XDU.'X'I'ION SPEAKERS l-Yrs! ww, lvl! In r'1'q!7!: N. Hanes, E. Billcr. I., Jaeger. .Hlmurvxf ww: CQ. Ifink, Ci. Ncugclmucr. B, I1L1llCDbCl' SIQNIOR ffl ASS COUNCIL I..-ll In rmlzl' B, Mclxulda-11. 5, Xlrlnlllruwxs, B, Snlurcnkn, NI. fnkofl, H Itlliili pr srl nl .momn .l, idxxnpbcll. 5 Pmxgncy, Thirteen