Walton High School - Periwinkle Yearbook (Bronx, NY)

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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

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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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The Doweia ol Music See deep enough, says Sidney Lanier, and you see musically, the heart of Nature being everywhere, musicf, For the past few years, we have been living through troubled times, Yet, if we look deeply enough, we can see that although our material losses have been severe, our spiritual gains have been great. Never before have the people of the world realized the necessity of music, now have they realized its vast extent. Today, music, as well as all the other arts, has been given rebirth. Through- out the past few years, music has been placed in the background because of the vast entertainment found in less intellectual activi- ties. Today, we find a quickening interest in, and a greater apprecia- tion for, every form of music, This is because humanity in its greatest need has always turned to the arts. All men need music, for comfort, enjoyment and inspiration. Few can be found who will admit that music holds no interest for them, Music brings forth the fine qualities in the oldest and young- est, the weakest and strongest. Shakespeare in lulius Caesar portrays the weakness of a man who is unmoved by music. l-le loves no plays, Anthony, he hears no music, seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort, as if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit that could be moved to smile at anything. Such men as he be never at heart's ease. Shakespeare shows clearly that unless men be endowed with appreciation of music, they are lacking qualities necessary to human beings. Charles lvl. Schwab, one of the men who realizes that music is needed to cheer, comfort and help the unfortunate, has expressed his profound desire that the people of today be given worthwhile music composed by famous musicians of the past and of the pres- ent day. Through his generosity, a nation-wide audience of radio listeners is given hours of such music, 4 One rainy Saturday afternoon several years ago, john D. Rocke- feller entered a concert hall and to his utmost amazement found the auditorium jammed with people, ordinary, every-day people who were so music-hungry that they stood in long rows throughout the entire concert, which lasted several hours. lt was an appreciative, an understanding, and a grateful audience. lvlr, Rockefeller vowed at that moment that, if the people of New York loved and appre- ciated music to such an extent, he would promote all his efforts to foster a deeper love throughout the city. Thus was born the inspira- Q O at O l'Q I Q 5 0