Walton High School - Periwinkle Yearbook (Bronx, NY)

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O 9'l I I C 4 9 I s ccwhol o Diece olwork is Cl Nlclnln In one of his most celebrated works, Shakespeare has said, What a piece of work is a man, but if that eminent genius could be reincarnated and could reside in our world of to-day, with what sentiments would he view our present state of existence? Would his expectations be frustrated because Man in his progress had created a machine age which hindered him from perceiving and appreciating all that is beautiful in Nature, or would all lVlan's inven- tions appear to corroborate the accuracy of those famous lines? There is little besides the sky remaining of natural environ- ment in our cities of today, and even that lthough it is scarcely perceptible in the skyscraper sections of the cityl is dotted with numerous airplanes and occasional Zeppelins or concealed by the smoke of factories. What can be discerned of the heavens is hardly observed, people having become so accustomed to their artificial environment, the stars and moon by night are inconspicuous amidst the brilliant illumination of a great city, only the annual appear- ance of the asteroids or the eclipse engage the curiosities of city residents. The majority would rather view the stars of l-lollywood in their stuffy neighborhood movie-houses than the phenomenal per- formances of stars and other celestial bodies in a clear evening sky. The country roads, lined with advertising bill-boards, the rivers, crowded with dirty, smoky barges and ferries, railroads steaming across the country, tenements and the filthy, crowded streets of the slums, the noise of the cities,-all these might have given Shake- speare an unfavorable impression of our civilization. l-lowever, if Shakespeare would assume an altogether different attitude, and would consider us in a different light, he might glorify our times and immortalize our era for posterity as he has immortal- ized the Elizabethian period for us. Our lofty, imposing modern buildings may be thought of four centuries from now as the arms of lVlan, reaching forever upward, exemplifying our eternal craving for knowledge and desire for adventure and discovery, with the sky as our limit. Our landcraft-from automobile to locomotive, our seacraft-from speedboat to ocean liner, our aircraft-from biplane to dirigible--all are encouraging good-will among men by bringing them closer together. Our people, progressing rapidly, are all striving to attain some ideal, some form of Utopia, some leading, such as the scientists, philosophers, artists of all fields,

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A Sonnel lo Silence l stood alone upon a windy hill, The sky was ghostly gray, and on the ground A tew leaves tluttered, softly, without Sound, And then the air hung curtain-like and still, And silence took on torm betore my eyes, Like ancient hills inhabiting all space, And curving ever upward, tace to face, An undulating gesture to the skies. Nor was there light nor shade the earth around, But luminous twilight then did calmly dream, And pearl-gray heavens whence no star did gleam But made the tranquil stillness more profound. And l upon a windy hill did stand, Amid the quiet peace of a forgotten land. ROSE SOBEI. QQ O 6 5 I Q- I' -O I Q N l be

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inventors, discoverers, explorers-most following the leader each thinks will guide him along the most direct path to his ideal. Perhaps some are wont to think that, compared with our present day, Shakespeare's time gave him little on which to base his state- ment. During the interim, there have been built great pillars of achievement in politics and science, in politics, the entire reor- ganization of Europe with the reign of Napoleon, the declarations of independence of Germany, of France, and of the United States, the World War, and finally, following that catastrophe, the peace movement led by the League of Nations, in science, the great step taken in construction of buildings, bridges, and craft of all sort, the discovery of the use of the power in the earth, electricity, gas, and steam, advancements in astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics, and finally probably the most beneficial to humanity, the great enlightenment brought about by the self- sacrificing students of the human body, who pledged their lives to the cause of saving those of a generation, Although the tendency during the last few centuries has been to abandon the arts in favor of the previously-mentioned more serious development, painting, sculpture, music, and literature have stood the test quite rigidly, and their followers have lived up to, if not improved upon, the standards set for them by their predecessors. lt is in the field of music that, one might say, the greatest progress since the seven- teenth century was made, for only since then has there been pro- duced such geniuses in harmony as Bach, lvlozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and Paderewski. It is the general argument that painting and sculpture are in the decline, although their prin- ciples have been upheld by Rembrandt, Reynolds, Van Dyck, West, and a representative of the growing independence of the fair sex, Rosa Bonheur, who pioneered into this new field for women. The literary artists since Shakespeare need little introduction, From his own native country and from its offspring, America, there have been many, from England, Milton, Dryden, lohnson, Burns, and other poets of the Romantic period he ushered ing the great critics, Carlyle and Macaulay and Tennyson, Dickens, and Stevenson, writers of the novel, from America, Irving, Cooper, Emerson, l-law- thorne, Longfellow, Whitman, and Clemens, all endowed with that genuine quality which is strictly American. As France gave us Voltaire, Hugo, Dumas, and Daudet, so the more philosophical and scientific Germany gave us Goethe, l-leine, Tieck and Schiller. Shakespeare saw none of all this marvelous progress, yet verily could he say, How noble in reason! l-low infinite in facultyl ln form QQ 6 5 I Q- PQ O ,O 0 I I A XX 90 .1 fat