United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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Poems by Glen MacKenzie Pictures on the Wall A mass of pictures on the wall Sits silently. Across the hall The pictures hang, on strings Attached to high hooks. Lifeless things, These pictures? Four rows across — Four rows of photographs. And by them pass Each day almost, a flock, a mass Of school-kids. They think not of the loss Behind those pictures; and why should they? Life must move, and these long halls More kids must walk from day to day, From year to year; and as Time falls Down its endless way, boys and girls Must go on learning; learning, laughing, living As others have before them. Classrooms, Posters, pencils, chalk; seats and desks; black¬ boards; A present world-—a NOW unfurls For every present pupil, giving Each bouquet of feelings like spring blooms: They’re new; they’re hoards Of life, meant just for him. But threads Of life already lived, unite this school With more than present worlds; A thousand worlds of man have left here Echoes of their treads. How alike it all is, yet how oddly Different! Each life, alive with novelty, Traverses paths down trodden deep Through many wandering pasts. Perhaps through all eternity those pasts Are wandering yet! But now — today — (What is “today”?)—a mass of students Wanders past a mass of pictures. No doubt in future years There’ll be more pictures on the wall, And for a multitude of reasons: For fame perchance, or honour, or maybe just For graduation. As for these Across the hall—these images of persons That have learned and laughed and lived In this same school; these pictures Showing many men (I wonder who the scholars were . . . The troublemakers . . . the athletic kings?), Many men, with special coats and caps Adorned; these pictures, having names beneath, Have something else beneath them: Satellite It is a smiling, laughing, white moon There in the midnight sky; Beyond the bar-graph, neon-lined horizon It rolls in stillness by. There is a meaning to that moon, That tri-light shade tipped upon its side; That misty mother of the dark, still, black dome; That white, ethereal mover of the tide. Busy, swirling, bothered dust specks Move in hectic mingle on this earthy one, While white, white, distant, cool and white, The shimmering moon sits smiling at the sun. 30

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agencies and groups that are poor enough to afford integrity. I am convinced of the supreme importance of the xisions o f youth. In that re¬ gard may I commend to you two poems. The first entitled Germinal is by that grand Irish writer and prophet, George William Russell (“AE”), which is a plea for the opportunity for the young person to acquire the vision that shall sustain him through life: “Let thy young wanderer dream on! Call him not home”. And the second, a sonnet of Elinor Wylie, is a passionate appeal to protect the integrity of that vision and to keep it free from the “contagion of the world’s slow stin”: “Protect the sacred from the secular danger; Instruct her strictly to preserve Thy gift And alter not its grain in atom sort”. Under such a talisman you will scorn the pre¬ vailing idea of getting on, the curse of our time, which means more money, a better social posi¬ tion, expensive cars and deadening respecta¬ bility. Closely related to this is the false and glittering slogan of “education for leisure”. Un¬ less we revise our current notions of leisure, .AFTER CLASSES .SPARE PERIODS .EVENINGS THE HE-MEN OF THE COLLEGE GATHER AT THE Y.M.C.A. ULTRA-MODERN FACILITIES EXPERT INSTRUCTION FREE • WRESTLING • BASKETBALL • BODY BUILDING • SWIMMING • LIFESAVING, ETC. SPECIAL STUDENT RATES 301 Vaughan Phone 92-3157 which are in terms of golf clubs, dance halls and watching other people engage in what is known as sport, this cry is a hollow mockery. Educa¬ tion is good for its own sake—it is its own reward. I have gone on much too long with these ex¬ hortations. One must not stand forever on tip¬ toe. Before a subside into the dignified silence in which a Chancellor should dwell, there is one thing that should be said. It desperately needs to be said at this time. And that is that now and in the immediate future the continuity of culture and the future of Western civilisation may have to be maintained by a very small num¬ ber of people. We are the heirs of a great tradi¬ tion and way of life. That ancestral wisdom is rooted in a moral attitude from which we secede at peril to the human race. It is our duty and particularly the task of institutions of learning and their graduates to keep that heritage alive so that it may sustain the present and illuminate the future. In this mission—to paraphrase Micah—you will try to do justly; you will love mercy; and you will walk humble with your God. You may lose interest in what you buy but not in what you bank. THE ROYAL BANK OF CANADA 29

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In a Public Library There he stands—his old coat Drooping mournfully, and on his gnarled fingers, Arms behind his back, a brown cap Perching. Old wrinkled trousers hang In folds, bent a bit and dusty, overlapping Grey and (when his feet are shifting) Squeaky boots. From out his pocket, Awkwardly, sticks a daily paper, Sort of soiled. Into the shelves of books Peers the grooved face, the white wreath On his head haphazard sitting. And then, Midst coughs and sniffles periodic, Eyebrows raised, forehead folded, Glasses set well back upon his nose, The old man looks with studious eye A few books over. Loophole The artificial city tries with all its strength To harass nature’s harbingers. Vain attempt! All the buildings, all the pavements, All the fences, sewers and sidewalks, All the man-constructed houses, lined in rows — Huge horrid hunks, unsightly on the streets; All metal, iron, wooden braces, Bars and bolts and nuts and screws And nails, nailed in man-molded wood By a thousand city hammers; all the cars And trucks, and screechings from the city’s messy mass Of cold machines, the harsh and heavy Grindings of cog-wheels and axles; All the flag-poles, smoke-stacks, factories And factory accessories, sky-scrapers, tools: Big blocks of builded nature, built By man, fitting adjuncts To this modern world — all, not all unnatural things On earth, can keep the glittering glow of stars and moon, And the low, deep whistle of the wind Out. 31