It is an awesome, awestriking page. It is a page to be proud of. It is a page to sing the praises of. It is a page to go down in the pages of history, if you’ll permit me (in the annals of history, if you won’t). It is a page to gaze at and say admiringly, “By God, there’s a page! By God, those were the days when men knew how to write pages!” It is a page not to be surpassed, nay, not even to be equalled. It is a page from which to remove so much as a punctuation mark would be entirely unforgivable. It is a page to which to add a word would be a disgrace upon humanity, much less three more pages.
I.
They may tell you Kirkland dates way back to 1931,
They may praise its iron gates, its courtyards fair in snow and sun,
But it’s precious few can tell you, for it’s precious few that know,
Men who never walked its courtyards haunt them yet in sun and snow.
There’s the spirit, killed in battle, of the patriot John Hicks;
At his house the troops were quartered through the spring of ‘seventy-six.
Now preserved by grace of Harvard, Hicks House Library remains,
And he beams upon the thesis-writing guests it entertains.
President Kirkland looks with pride on what in life he never saw,
His achievements that have lasted, founding schools of div. and law,
How he strove to open Harvard’s gates “to all” and not “to some,”
And to broaden and to modernize the school’s curriculum.
II.
Through the deeply-recessed arches pass the students and the years,
Warm Septembers, soggy Marches, full of laughs and loves and tears;
Yet it’s rare the chap who’s heard it, so it’s rare the chap believes,
But the voices of the founders fill the stilly summer eves.
First there’s Lowell, still proclaiming what he famously avowed,
Fearing Harvard’s growth would lead to students lost within a crowd,
And espousing smaller housing, where a House could be a home:
“We’ll make men of mark in Ravenna, more than men in the mobs of Rome.”
There’s the voice of Edward Harkness, though an Eli, not a fool;
Lowell’s plans could light the darkness of his sad, benighted school,
So he offered Yale his millions, but they stalled, and so he said,
“Never ‘eard o’ ‘esitatin’ — I’ll fund ‘arvard’s ‘ousin’ instead!”
III.
You may admire the pediments, the quoins may catch your eye,
But who would see our benefactors, watching from on high?
On the clearest days, look skywards, if you will accept my claims,
To the men who gave these buildings and their fortunes and their names.
There’s George Smith, who funded both Smith Halls and named each for his guardian,
With entryways in Oxbridge style and formal rooms Edwardian.
Before there was a Kirkland, they were made a freshman dorm;
Now, no other River Houses share their double-chimneyed form.
Some years later, George S. Bryan, may his memory be praised,
Helped the House to raise the money to help Bryan Hall be raised,
With its Georgian architecture, modeled after bygone cent’ries,
From the closets to the boot-scrapers that sit outside the entries.
IV.
Soon enough you will move onwards. While you’re here, then, keep in mind
Those who left behind the House that soon enough you’ll leave behind,
Here’s a toast to those long gone, and you will trust that they can hear it:
May we evermore be blessed with Kirkland’s ghosts and K-House spirit!
[Honestly rather disappointed that Jesse Cohen didn’t use my version of the history instead of the one posted on the Kirkland House website.]
