The Winds

CLASS OF 1942 POEMREAD AT CLASS DAY

Now then, say this of us; We know what winds are for!

First, with the toppling trees, we found the hand that held the cross cut's other end pulled just as hard to free the road as we ourselves. So then, the face across the trunk, unknown, by dawn became a friend's, almost!

And, from the first mad, greeting wind, we found for every season; winds. Found in them gentleness and warmth, or brutal savagery unheld! We've lived upon a hill, and hills and winds are known to each, well knownl

Fall wind's for sweeping leaves from boughs, to take what's held for long enough and pile them over curbs, down streets. The leaves, that skip the wind, are raked, and, rustle piled, burned ofE, ash turned, and a man at the head to serve them out perhaps the dog yaps at the foot. They burn, and even then the wind puffs off the ashes, scatter grey, till all that's left to show they've been is smoke smell on the clothes of men!

The honest cold of Winter wind; we've doubled into it, 'most numb, and thought to turn our backs, but knew that once so turned we could not tell which way our footsteps printed snow. Ungentle force, and ducked against, yet forming beauty in its way of leaving, for the morning look, the icy, lazy, scalloped drifts that hold blue shadows, sharp out lines, with shine enough to narrow eyes. Then, in the coming of next night's wind, the drifted shapes have changed, or gone, with all their beauty shaped again; that's as it always is, should be!

The first Spring bringing wind we know, and how its promises are tricks; tricks telling of the coming warmth,

then, laughing, stinging out with rain! Yet, kindly too, each following shower that wind may raise melts off more snow and makes a clearing for the Spring. So if its promises seem false, (We charge it cried too many times) it tricks us yet again, undoes one trick with more, and makes a last amend, surprising us with Spring!

And after Spring; what winds are known? By then each one of us can feel of separate winds, in separate spots; though it is said that Summer is no windy time; too easy, calm, to be much stirred, or ruffled up, that winds there are are yours to name!

So now we meet, and at a time when winds are finding peace, or so the way of nature points, and yet there is a wind blows on us all which, though we try, we cannot fix in any season, time or place. And, were we leaves, and that may be, its force would whirl us all away. Yet hoping to be more than leaves with better strength to hold a branch, we brace ourselves to battle gales. Perhaps a thing we've never learned, and some may fail, and yet . . . well try!

Lacrosse Captain Joe Wilder on a dodge into the goal as Dartmouth beat Harvard 11-8 onthe Reunion Week-end at Memorial Field.