School Motto and Song
"In Pectore Robur", meaning Heart of Oak (or more poetically 'Strength in the heart'), initially appeared in the 1850s under John Smith Gilderdale. It is referred to in the School Song (below)
- Eja! Felices! Hodie vacandi
- Cantico dulcis celebretur hora!
- Laus sit in linguis, animo voluptas,
- Pectore robur, pectore robur!
- Gaudeant pensis pueri peractis,
- Gaudeat cura vacuus magister;
- En! Domus gaudet! Sua concinamus
- Gaudia quisque, gaudia quisque.
- Pectoris robur, puerique custos,
- Qui Puer quondam in pueris fuisti,
- Fac Tibi semper placeamus omnes
- Pectore puro, pectore puro!
The school song has been set to music and is sung regularly at end-of-term chapel services and other important occasions.
More recently, a previous Master of Music, Stefan Reid, arranged this for orchestra and it premièred at the annual End of Year Concert (now traditionally held in the Sports Hall). It is sung at certain significant assemblies (e.g. end of year) and at Commemoration Day, however current convention is that only the first verse is sung.
Read more about this topic: Forest School (Walthamstow)
Famous quotes containing the words school, motto and/or song:
“Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums ... who find prison so soul-destroying.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“I always say, my motto is “Art for my sake.” If I want to write, I write—and if I don’t want to, I won’t. The difficulty is to find exactly the form one’s passion—work is produced by passion with me ... Mwants to take.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent’s shadow. Our mother’s faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)