Hunter College High School - Argus Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Melody of Beauty by Phyllis Schwartz I WALK slowly to the top of the hill, and pause. It will never do to walk on, with this heaven of motionless beauty before me. All the majestic grandeur awaiting the touch of God's fingers, he had poured into this simple scene. Surely the sloping green of these hills has been poured by the most delicate of I-lands. At my feet the grass is ankle-high. The delicate lavendar of clover brushes the soft yellow of tiny buttercups. A daisy whose stem I have bent, but not crushed with my foot, slowly raises its fringed head. A hurt child, it is, with reproach in every motion! I move a few steps, and my shadow falls upon it. The sun, warm on my back, is sinking lower in the heavens. The green of the hill opposite me gradually softens. Far, far below the river flows, like a silver girdle amidst folds of velvet, I half close my eyes and there at the bend of the river sit the Fates. They are lovely. Their long grey hair, wafted in the wind, trails the water. They are the end of life, as they are the end of the flow- ing streaml I close my eyes, then open them-to brush away the haziness. The willows at the end of the stream are mere shadows in the deepening twilight. The hill on which I stand shades the water. Only a broad ribbon of light bathes the slope beside me. The shadow creeps higher and higher, The sun is no longer warm on my back. Softly I turn and walk back across the grass. Beauty of God's making is at rest. Night Magic, majestic, encompassing night, Closing serenely the portals of day, Curtain the sun in her rosy array- Kindle the stars as they turn in their flight- Cradle the world in your comforting dark- Station the moon as your heavenly mark- Magic, majestic, encompassing night, Out of your darkness, reveal me the light, Bayla Vixman thirty-two

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Henry sprang from his seat in horror. The man was mad! He bent in anguish over his dying friend to question him, wrest that last meaning from him-but it was too late. Hepburn was dead. That last wish had wrung all life from him. Graves sank back into his seat. There, still before him, the bony finger still pointed, hang- ing out of the bed like a last, unshakable determination that would not die. It demanded. It insisted. Graves seized it and stowed it beneath the cover, murmuring- Yes, Lewis, yes-your part in Hamlet-- III THE EMPIRE THEATRE Clown fSingsj: But age, with his stealing steps, Hath claw'd me in his clutch, And hath shipped me intil the land, As if I had never been such. fThrows up a skull.l Hamlet: 'AThat skull had a tongue in it, and could sing onceg how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw- bone. lt might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'erreaches. The curtain rose on the churchyard scene. Hepburn's last wish had been obeyed. Graves, the clown, stood mutely beside his fellow jesters, ruefully anticipating the moment when after a final cynical epigram he must lift his spade and toss the withered skull of his friend across the stage. The moment came at last. He cast the shrivelled object into the air, and shrank in horror as he beheld it crash to the floor in flaky fragments. He bent dismayed over the pieces. The curtain fell. A few minutes later, a man sat lost in a labyrinth of thought. He saw Hepburn again, as he had been accustomed to stand, crouching in the wings, watching, wanting, a chance-Life had not given it to him. Death had been a relief from hoping, and a grim. opportunity-to play in Hamlet-But even that-even that. 'iprovidentialln-He buried his face in his hands - Alas, poor Yorickf' he muttered, l knew him. thirty-one -i

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The Diurnal Lepidopteran by Sylvia Neiderman HE butterfly-catching craze hit our camp this year. It struck all, from the little Midgets to the high and mighty P. Cfs fprivileged campers J. In the boys' camp, no one, from the directors baby to the conceited waiters, was exempt from the craze which swept over camp like a prairie fire. One of the directors, a biology teacher in high school, originated the fine art of but- terfly-catching - with disastrous results. During a basketball game, a butterfly might be sighted-then the chase began. Some facetious person remarked that the camp's star in track, trained to run after butterflies. Indeed it seemed so, for he was always in the van of the pursuit. No matter where one secluded himself, one was not safe from the prying eyes and net of the naturalist. The nets, by the way, were made from wire hangers and mosquito netting. One place was still sacred to the girls-the hill on which the old bas- ketball field had stood. The seniors repaired, immediately after lunch, to this hill with a supply of the inevitable movie magazines, melting chocolate or fruit saved from the table. VVe spread our- selves on the blankets, disregarding the stones underneath or the ants and occasional worms crawling above. There we took sun- baths more or less in the altogether. Yet even here were heard shrieks of horror, embarrassment and terror when one of the fanatic butterfly chasers stumbled into this female sanctuary. Outside of the social hall was an erstwhile lilac bush. One day it rained torrents, and, on poking our heads out timidly, we noticed a number of figures attired in raincoats, braving the storm, seemingly to pick leaves off the bush. This was too tempting a bait for curious girls to neglect, so we braved the elements to see what they were about. We came up with a shout. Hush up! they shouted. A'You'll disturb them. We found 'ithemn to be a very rare kind of butterfly, brilliant in color and larger than average, which fasten themselves underneath thirty-three