Latin School of Chicago - Sigillum Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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SIGILLUM New London, and O Sea, Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime, Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though cast Together in one merciless white blade- The boy extuaries Heck the hard sky limites. -HART CRANE Recall all this, these fading dreams. O sea, and sounds, and stars and sky! O sea, wind-ruflied, spread out flat, or spitting fury to the gods, And sounds, of slapping breakers in the rocks, and sprinkling puddles on the sand, And stars that guided sailors on the deep, the moon that warned of storms, And sky, grey and blanket-like, touching the rims of latitudes Beyond the human eye. New London . . . Sea, Recall all this. Requiem So dream, so dream, O pensive towns, We know you in our hearts. If you are still and quiet, tradition's true retreat, If ghosts at night slip from their time-Worn graves And leave the church-yard's mythic shade, You cherish still . . . a fragmentary breath Of glory past. If, though, but placards mark those days, If life has left you almost lost, and the rattle of trolleys and din of work's traflic, Pause but a moment . . . consider your richness 5 Then let daily problems, your life, rush on. The past, the past . . . the present weaves it in its web, And what our lives no longer need we give up Unto Time.

Page 55 text:

SIGILLUM When New England slavers were bearing their cargoes, of black mumbo jumbo and terrified negroes, When, for trinkets and trifles, buying ebony gold mines, they sailed swiftly back from the Africa Gold Coast, If chance should have blown then, north up the Atlantic, They might have seen whales shooting spouts. And soon sturdy square-riggers, the functional whalers, drop anchors at port When we think of Melville's seamen, and the ghost of Moby Dick- Ambergris, a fading pipe-dream . . . it recalls those vivid days, just as does this sailor's diary: Comfort Davis hath hired My whale-boat, The Guidance, to go a-whaling out to Fisher's. . . Read these answers to queries proposed by officials Of George the Third's government, now in New London: '4The natural produce of this country is timber, and iron and copper ore, and the wax of the myrtle, The produce and stable commodities are . . . wheat, oats, rye, and maize, Beans, peas and potatoes, cheese, cider and apples? The streets . . . and the wharves . . . are a-hum with this com- merce: The produce heaped high in drays drawn by yoked oxen, Or teams of six horses, six sturdy black Percherons, Carts heavy with wheat, kiln-dried corn in fat barrels, Peas in bags, pots of butte, and savoury round cheese-M From the pastures of Sharon, or Lebanon's richness, And piles of pipe staves of the sweet-smelling spruce- Rumbling down from old Norwich, from Hebron or Putnam, Or from the Yantic banks. These, to Philadelphia, in small coasting vessels, and down the seaboard coast, And for lumber and live stock, the French and Dutch traders gave cocoa and cotton, And trading then prospered, gathering speed as a spinnaker picks up the wind, To England with pot-ash, with flax-seed for linen, The trade scope grew larger-Gibralter and Barbary, New London had trade with the world!

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