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:
“The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“My friend devotes himself to his life, whenever he can find the spare time. His motto is: ‘Don’t just sit there: live!’ So he’s too busy to stand, to walk, to do anything, except to live. He even refused to kiss a girl, when invited, on the grounds that it was time again to be living. Schedules are sacred to him.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. The Self-Devoted Friend, New Directions (1967)
“She sang a song that sounds like life; I mean it was sad. Délira knew no other types of songs. She didn’t sing loud, and the song had no words. It was sung with closed lips and it stayed down in one’s throat.... Life is what taught them, these Negresses, to sing as if they were choking back sobs. It is a song that always ends with a beginning anew because this song is the picture of misery, and tell me, does misery ever end?”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)