Trafalgar School - Echoes Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

Page 20 text:

CHURCH BFXLS Like a theme of some tiauntitif;; melody, That fades only to liave its memories Linger and repeat themselves over and over In that little corner of a wearied mind, Singing its hopes and reviving the spirit. Lifting the head of one howed for life Under the weight and cares of the world; So to the soul is the ringing of church hells Over the hill, on a clear wintry night. Elizabeth Brow, Form VI, Ross House. PREFECTS (with apologies to Lewis Carroll) Aren ' t you happy, dear Prefect? the young girl said, For we are sublimely gay; We run in the corridor, talk on the stairs. Why don ' t you join us in play? In my youth , the old Prefect replied to the girl, I was just as unruly as you. But now that I ' m old and be-girdled as well, What do you think I can do? You are wise , said the girl with the greatest of awe, And also imposing to see. But why do you ruin yourself in pursuit Of children who shout in their glee? In my youth , said the sage with a frightful grimace, I tried the very same thing. But when you ' re a Prefect and very ' high-hat ' . To the wind all those follies you fling . Do you think it is easy , the young girl said, To rise to such a great height? I ' d lief be a Prefect when I reach the Sixth. What hope if I follow your light? In my youth , said the wise one, with serious face, I invariably aimed at the top. If you ' re good in the Sixth, an example to all. There ' s no telling where you will stop. Denys Clakke, Form VT, Fairley House. [lai

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DAW HE GAY twitter of birds outside my bedroom window awakened me. I slipped X quietly out of bed, tiptoed across the room and looked out of my window. Dawn was breaking and I could just make out the grey-green waters of the Channel, the white cliffs, and the golden sands, lapped by the white-crested waves. As I watched the sky, the darkness began to fade and arrows of light shot out from the east, breaking the sky into little fleecy clouds. As it grew lighter, I could see the red sails of a fishing fleet coming in after a night ' s hard toil. The sand became a deep gold and the seaweed on the little children ' s castles glistened. The morning dew on the lawn before my window shone like pearls. The flowers which had closed for the night were beginning to open, and along the winding lane the milkman on his early round was singing. The freshness and beauty of this peaceful scene remained long in my memory. Three years later, I was staying in the same house — not for my summer holidays but because I had been evacuated from my bombed town. Early one morning, I was awakened by a thundering roar. I rushed to my window, pulled aside my blackout cur- tain and looked out. The scene on which I gazed was very different from that which I had seen three years before. No longer were birds singing in the garden; high up in the sky and flying swiftly towards the Continent, was a fleet of dark bombers, flecked by the rising sun. The sun was rising like a red ball shining through a thick fog, which I soon recognized as the smoke from an armada of warships out in the Channel, steaming on some perilous mission. On the sand there were no longer children ' s tunnels and castles, but instead masses of thick, ugly, barbed wire ; where there had been lawns, there were now neat rows of vegetables. The tops of the cliffs were all enclosed, and I could see projecting from barricades the noses of anti-aircraft guns searching for enemy planes. Where I had previously seen the jolly milkman, a dispatch rider was dashing along and a jeep stood at the side of the road. How war had changed even the view from my window ! But as my eyes turned upwards to the sun, it seemed to smile at me and remind me that for countless centuries it had witnessed many such changes — from joy to sorrow, from peace to war — and that soon it would rise again on the kind of world for which we are all longing — a world of peace. Denise Craig, Form VA, Ross House. [17]

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ON A SCHOOL EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE THE school-editions of literary masterpieces are curiosities which we take for granted these days, but a few hundred years from now they may well be collectors ' items. Our descendants will handle the yellow pages of our school-edition Shakespeares with considerably more reverence than did their great-great-great-grandparents. My own third-hand copy of Macbeth will be an especially good example of this species of a not so rare animal. Mulling over its pages, I have often thought that, particularly in war-time, it is an almost criminal waste of paper to include the text of the play itself in editions of this sort. It was Shakespeare who originally wrote the play, I know, but the editor of the school-edition, assisted by the literary critics of four centuries and three countries, has rewritten and clarified it so well, that it is high time Shakespeare gave up, and bowed himself gracefully out of the whole affair. My edition of Macbeth , and I take it as being the average edition, is composed as follows: — A Foreword; An Appreciation of Shakespeare; paragraphs on the Historical Drama and Macbeth ; lengthy and complete sketches of the main characters; a chronological table; Source of the Plot; Notes — thirty-two pages full; an Appendix; Questions for Junior Students; Questions for Senior Students; General Questions; Examination Papers; Essay Subjects; and Passages for Memorization. As an afterthought, the text of the play is inserted, in case anyone should be interested, and the whole conglomeration is labelled Macbeth . At some future date people will have forgotten which is by Shakespeare, and which is not, and instead of Macbeth , the Notes and Questions for Senior Students will be dramatized on the stage. There is an additional feature, however, to school-editions, and this one cannot be claimed by any editor. It is a mark that is put upon a book only after it has been pored over and thumbed through thoroughly; it gives to a book half its value, and is a good standard by which to judge its worth or worthlessness. This is the time-honoured doodling. The first doodler was the monk in his cell, and out of his doodling grew an art. I doubt if there is much art in present-day doodling, but there is a great deal of self-expression. My edition of Macbeth has passed through the hands of two people who have left upon it their characters. I have never met either of them, but I am intimately acquainted with both. The first possessor was a dominating sort of person. She writes in a firm, round hand and interprets Macbeth in a way which might startle even him. Once this person got hold of an idea, I don ' t think she would ever let go, even in the face of all the outraged literary dictators who have flourished since the world began. She doodles copiously and very much off the point. It is evident that she was not the least impressed with either the poetry of Shakespeare, or the tragedy of Macbeth. Under Macbeth ' s well-known soliloquy on sleep, she has drawn the face of a sleeping man, whose snores, expressed by the letter Z , flow out of his mouth and form a complete frame around the passage. She has further shown her indiff ' erence to poor Macbeth ' s misfortunes, by adorning every picture of him with an inky coiffure, taste- fully arranged in a pompadour, which looks odd, not to say out of place, in conjunction with his bushy beard. [19]