University of Western Ontario - Occidentalia Yearbook (London, Ontario Canada)

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WESTERN D GAZETTE BRESCIA HALL The old house was silent. Squirrels chased one another across its lawns; robins hopped from branch to branch in its trees ; unplucked the apples fell to the earth, but no footstejis trod its paths — and the old house moaned. Your day will come, said the garage, lifting its weath- lervane skyward. Your day will come — and mine. 1 was not built for a barn. But ever the house grew more mournful, more silent. People passing by looked curiously at it, but it heeded not ; strange whispers were in the air, but it heard them not ; only day by day it watched the dust thicken on its floor.s, and it slumbered in growing gloom. A door was flung open high up on the third floor and a stream of sunlight fell across the hall. A partition here, I think: window seats before the windows, The house awoke and listened. Radiators here and here and electric light must be installed, double burners for students ' lamps. There will be room, the voic con- tinued, for four — six — or easily nine or ten on this floor also. Life changed for the old house. Its sides were torn by the hammers- of carpen- ters ; its floors rent by plumbers ; the paint brush went over its woodwork, and soon it was awake, rejoicing in a new youth. Strange scraps of conversation did it hear, talk of hikes, ball games, of the Lit and the U, fragments of learning — predicables and syllogisms, a word of French and a sentence of Spanish, where Socrates was wrong, what Caesar should have done. And now it rocked with the sound of song and ragtime, and now felt dancing feet. It listened to the thoughts of youth and the glowing visions of the spring of life ; it, too, dreamed with the university students who had made it their home —dreamed o ' the splendor of its mission, of an influence ever broadening, ever widening, ever enobling, stretching over Western Ontario. And I, said the Ann?x, i)roudly sur- veying its lecture halls and cozy studies, ' ' I was not built for a barn. ' ' Dreams The glad dreams, the mad dreams, the dreams that fill the days With tingling sorts of sweetness in a thousand different ways And life is gloriously good — the world with song ' s a-thrill— Or deeply, wondrously content, in peaec that ' s sweet and stilL The light dreams, the bright dreams, the dreams that sweep away The little bits of ugliness that cling to every day, And leave instead a treasure that with lovely fancies teams And makes this life worth living — yonth ' s sweet, fragrajit, ' oolish dreams I

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