The Spike or Victoria College Review October 1930

A Sunday Idyll

A Sunday Idyll

It is the Sabbath morning and calm the hallowed air,
Brightly shines the August sun upon The Day of Prayer.
While silver-sweet St. Peter's bells o'er mount and valley fade,
Our Executive is launching in the gym. its Health Crusade.
First, the odds and ends of furniture are pitched into the hall,
Including Turkish carpets, facial horrors from the wall.
At his costly desk sits Charlie thinking out new bulletins,
While Helen Dunn scrubs threadbare urns and basins, pans and bins.
Mildred Briggs counts tea-towels that display a will to roam,
Macduff lies painting on the floor with wistful thoughts of home.
Crisp and brown and mystifying are nestling in the pan
A winsome string of sausages to feed each hungry man.
Someone spills the varnish and Pen mops up the mess,
Poor Joey wand' ring to and fro is prattling N.U.S.
Those at Church may feel sublimity, uplift in every hymn,
But who could feel unspiritual on Sunday in the Gym.
The fate of erring students is decided by each saint,
Perhaps while playing poker or around a pool of paint.
The closing of the Common rooms may well—who knows—be due
To Charlie's falling badly foul of someone's pot of glue.
And if while moving ladders, Eastwood manages to strike
McCormick he is almost sure to find himself in "Spike."
While if Helen drops a tin-tack and Miss Roberts comes across it,
One Dramatic Club is due to lose its one pound net deposit—
Or hands some Worcester cups to Bish who stands upon a few,
Shortly we expect to hear that locker rents are due.
If Mountjoy drops the curtain on the back of poor John's neck,
The N.U.S. is almost sure to get a nasty check.
And as the shades of evensong descend upon the Gym
We hear the splint' ring crashes as our furniture goes in.
The cups are tossed from hand to hand, the fragments thrown away,
Joey folds his plumber's suit—so ends a Perfect Day.

—I.M.L.