Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Spike or Victoria College Review October 1930

The City

page 17

The City

It is often remarked by suffering students that a boarder's life at times can be far from a very happy one. However, such an existence has great compensations, and to those who do not live in Wellington there is given a joy denied to every mere Wellingtonian. It is the joy, at the opening of the Varsity sessions, of returning to the City.

To those coming from the far north, the immediate impression of Wellington is that of the incarnation of freshness. The cool breath that rose to greet us from the depths of Pukerua Bay suddenly floods around us as we rush from the murkiness of tunnels to skirt the rippling harbour. Blessed with a day of beaming sunshine, we will be met with a scene of scintillating beauty; if not, we can bestow our adoration on the magnificent contours of the hills.

What charms, indeed to rejoice the heart of any Rupert Brooke—lover of blue-massing clouds, wet roofs, firm sands and washen stones. Should he—or any like him—roam this wondrous city, can you not see his raptured gaze as he beheld that harbour with its thousand moods, its halo of sparkling lights, those intriguing flashes of red and white, the proud contours of the buildings, the upward thrust of noble spires and cranes, the many-funnelled wharves, the gleam of tramlines in the rain. Sounds, too,—far from the city's din—and above all the lulling lapping of waves, or, as he has it, "Sweet water's dimpling laugh."

One cannot but grow to love Wellington more and more, and at each succeeding return it greets one—as Egdon Heath did its Hardy—with "an aspect of kindly congruity." At last one feels one has become a part of the place. The new arrival eventually identifies himself with the soul of the City, and with all the rapture of O'Henry's "Noo Yarker," he knows at last that here he belongs indeed.

Cid.