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The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, June 1923

An Elder Sister's Songs (College Rhymes: Canterbury College, 1873-1923)

An Elder Sister's Songs (College Rhymes: Canterbury College, 1873-1923).

We cultivators of The Old Clay Patch who have already garnered two harvests of rhyme, now turn with pleasure to appraise the flowers and fruits that grow by Avon's side.

It is now fifty years since Canterbury College was founded, and to commemorate her jubilee, an anthology has been published of the Verses written by her men and women students from 1873 to the present day. It will be a treasured volume—a book to smile and to sigh over, to dream over, and to love. It is a friendly book. From the frontispiece—a delicate etching of Canterbury College—to the last page t here breathes forth the spirit of Loyal comradeship; there lurks" the laughter learnt of friends"; there sparkles College quips and cranks; and over all lingers the tenderly regretful reminiscence of middle-age for "the days where youth belongs."

The Anthology is divided into two parts—the first containing topical verse, and the second verse that is "associated with Canterbury College not in theme, but merely from the circumstance that the writer received some part of his education within its walls. (I quote from Mr. Alpers' interesting introductory reminiscence.)

It naturally follows that Part I cannot be appreciated properly by an outsider. Bu1 he can chuckle at the cleverness of Gilbertian rhymes, and marvel delightedly over "The Otagiad" of W. F. Ward, with its ecstatic tags (V.U.C. can even feel some reflected glory from "W.F."), and can join heartily in the toast of "Registrar Joynt." And he probably has seen

"Sage professors, grins and stately.
With indulgence smiling down. Add her marks inaccurately
Now that Lispeth wears a gown."

That may happen in any College; and other students besides Cantuarienses have watched in a College tea-room—

"The pot-plant's verdure flee
Through over-irrigation.
With surplus saucerfuls of tea
By way of gentle stimulation."

In Part II., however, are poems of wider interest. Many well-known names are there: William Pember Reeves, Jessie Mackay, Mary Colborne-Veel, and others whom we all know from the book of "New Zealand Verse."

Part II. opens with the oft-quoted poem of Reeves, "The Passing of the Forest. "One cannot travel anywhere through these islands without having those cruel contrasts before one's eyes, and without learning that

"A bitter price to pay
Is this for progress, beauty swept a way."

page 50

And yet one can take comfort from the fact that beauty shines even through desolation and know that "all cannot fade that glorifies the hills."

Another poem of contrast, so typical of New Zealand, this England in Maoriland, is Dora Wilcox's "Onawe." Onawe was the fortress near Akaroa which Rauparaha sacked, and whose defenders were mercilessly slain:

"All undisturbed the Pakeha herds are creeping Along the hill,
On lazy tides the Pakeha sails are sleeping, And all is still.

Here once the Haka sounded, and din of battle Shook the gray crags;
Triumphant shout and agonised death-rattle Startled the shags.

Tena koe! Pakeha! within the fortification Grows English grass;
Tena koe! subtle conqueror of a nation Doomed to pass!"

The verse of W. D. Andrews is very attractive. "The True Immortals" will appeal to all booklovers.

A poem that is singing in my memory with some of its lines is "A Time Will Come," by Arnold Wall. I showed it to a young literary-enthusiast friend of mine, and he objected to the last verse, "so inevitable," and added, "But you wouldn't call it a poem?" I felt sad for him, but he is young yet; and I would call it a poem. It seems to me to breathe the mellow calm of an English summer afternoon; it is severely wise and quiet, and who that loves cricket will not cherish the description of

"The beautiful, beautiful game
That is battle and service and sport and art."

If (to quote a very much-worked definition) "genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," then I think that the author of "Pantoum of the Plug" has some claims to the title. Its ingenuity amazes me. It is on page 86.

We all know the blase New Zealander who goes Home for perhaps a year, and "does" the Continent, and who returns to his native land super-critical. To him should be read the "Laudabunt Alii" of A. E. Currie. I quote the last verse:—

"Some day we may drop the Farewell Light, and lose the winds of home— But where shall we win to a land so bright, however far we roam? We shall long for the fields of Maoriland, to pass as we used to pass Knee-deep in the seeding tussock, and the long lush English grass; And we may travel a weary way ere we come to a sight as grand As the lingering flush of the sun's last ray on the peaks of Maoriland."

The homely things of life, the things of every day, have a champion in O. N. Gillespie. "Evensong" to him spells home and homeliness:—

"Sing a song of washing-up, shining clean plates,
Chattering together like a crowd of old mates;
Buxom cups and saucers and little white bowls,
Purely and demurely bright like little girl souls."

page 51

The lyrics of Irene Wilson are shadow-soft, quiet, calm, woman poems.

Among J. H. E. Schroder's verses is a sonnet, "The Street," which contains a vivid picture of any windy day in any N.Z. city:—

"The day
Mocks in a challenging splendour blue and gold,
The humbled ugliness; and then the bold
Vagabond wind flings in its face its stray
Litter of insults; urchin dust-whirls play
Their fitful games in the gutters."

Philip Carrington is represented by "Hougomont, 1815," the noble poem, that won the Chancellor's Medal at Cambridge; by "Rangiora," with its simple truth; and by the yearning little lyric "Desire":—

"My body walks in England
By little village stiles,
But my spirit goes a journey
Of thirteen thousand miles."

In conclusion, I quote some lines from the opening poem of the volume, for I feel that it has a message, not only for Canterbury College, but for all New Zealand. Those of us who are sometimes impatient of our country's "newness" and lack of tradition, feel our impatience as an unworthy thing when we read Professor Arnold Wall's dedicatory sonnet. It teaches us to feel our "newness" but as freedom to become great:—

"I have young blood and stirrings manifold,
And soarings of the spirit, swift and bold;
Shall I not glory in my lustres, too?

So speaks Canterbury College; and so, like her, let us

"Dread not heresy, nor sloth nor greed,
But gaze into the dawn with fearless eyes."

M.L.N.