Walton High School - Periwinkle Yearbook (Bronx, NY)

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IEQCIUTLI We are all made in different ways and that is why my defini- tion of beauty would never do for you. l-lowever, on one thing we are all agreed. Beauty is an indefinable quality which gives us pleasure, and pleasure is an indefinable quality which we may term completeness. To each of us, beauty makes a different approach, and sometimes, when she is in a graceful humor, she will favor some of us by permitting us to make with our hearts or brains some mirror in which she is reflected. Those lucky ones who have caught beauty in one of those moods have never been for- gotten, although some of them lived centuries and centuries ago. Their names have become synonyms for all the qualities beauty bears-grace, charm, color, truth, and so on to infinity, The two most powerful of all mirrors have proved themselves to be Literature and Art. With the medium of words or paints, human hands have caught and kept the rarety of rareties, lvlany poets have allowed beauty to seep through their poems without actually mentioning her, but she was unmistakably there, nevertheless. Shelley is delicacy, Burns is humanity, Lanier is music, and Shakespeare is life, These men have found their counterparts in the prose masters of the world, Barrie is delicacy, Dickens is humanity, the Bible is music, and all three are life. The paint-brush, however, has provided a medium of the ages, a happy means to a lovely end, and has given the world such names as Da Vinci, Titian, Raphael, Rubens and Corregio. These men possessed that sense of beauty, which, leading from their souls straight to their finger- tips, came to immortal life on canvas. Leonardo Da Vinci breathed life into his creations, a veritable Pygmalion. Titian dealt in color, glorious, vivid harmony and warm vital subjects. Raphael's work exuded exquisite perfection, his flawless canvases so regal that they seemed hardly human. Corregio fused his work with light, while Rubens, a master of the brush, built superb decorations and freizes. We shall never know what feelings prompted these men to set up their easels hastily, feeling an indescribable urge, a warm palpable feeling, and an eager heart that prompted their creations. We can only say when architects, artists, poets, weavers, com- posers, and musicians have done with their work: A thing of beauty is a joy forever. PEARL WEXLER Q it 6 I I'Q I S l

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43? H. -I wx , 9 Q .I 6 1 I 2944 tif landmarks along the road, the Hvalue received of our school careerl Novv the time has come for the working out of our promise to payll' The world vvill at once commence to look for us to pay back into its treasury the vvealth of good things it has for so long been bestovving upon us. lt vvill demand our noblest revelations of character, our highest demonstration of every latent possibility of attainment, our truest, tenderest attention to the needs of every brother and sister, our most faithful, self-sacrificing service. It vvill remind us, at every turn of the road, of that note always stand- ing in our name with its never failing, For value received, I promise to pay. lt vvill never once let us forget the cost of life-the constant expense that must be met-the unfailing price that must be paid for every gift-not in dollars and cents, but in service, in faithfulness to duty, in the uplift of our neighbors-yes, some- times, perhaps, in unavailing pain, and heartache, and tears. ROSE SOBEL

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Birds QQ Ot you, oh heavenly minstrels, Ot you, the poets sing, For your silver-throated voices , Do their praises ring. 0 N I sm ,Q Q 9, For your music e'er so sweet, They Iaud you and applaud you, Ot you, their poems treat. For the happiness you bring them, 'Tis small wonder Wordsworth worshipped you, Oh pilgrim of the sky, As he saw you, soaring skylark, d Mount higher in your flight. 5 That Shelley poured out his heart 0 To you, oh self-same bird, And envied you such freedom When your notes ot joy he heard. And you, oh chanting nightingale, Within yon shady glen, Did charm the beauty-loving Keats With your melodious strain. I T The darling of the Spring. And you, whom Wordsworth chose to name You, oh cuckoo, who, though never seen, yy Art always heard to sing. While you, green linnet, in your glad array, Dost hop among the trees, And appear, indeed, to be A brother of the dancing leaves. Thus, oh winged songsters, Do the poets sing your praise, And for the joy you bring to them, They, too, their voices raise. GERTRUDE ELION