"BIG BEN"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22284, 9 June 1934, Page 17

"BIG BEN"

>- By C. R. AIXBS. Residents in the north, end of Dunedin were startled to hear the familiar cadences of the famous Westminster chime issuing from what was once the Cyclopean tower that crowns the University Build- , ings. The history of the University .clock, or rather of its absence, was written by Professor George Thompson in . the r jubilee number of the Otago University' - Review. The University, of course, was y once housed in what is now the Stock e Exchange Building. When this building - was made over to the Colonial Bank it i- was'intended that the clock which still r gives the time of day to the denizens f of Princes street should be transferred - to the tower prepared for it in. the new a buildings by Leith side. The new occu3, pants of the building, however, claimed t that the clock was a fixture. Concequently it remained where it wag. .; . i For many years the alumni of the Otago > University went in and out. under ti;e e shadow of that, blind tower, whose aspect i alwayg suggested mild reproach. Ulti- , mately the want was made good by Sir 3 Thomas Sidey, whose munificence in many i directions is too well, known to be re--3 capitulated. The hours, as all know whom i circumstances; have kept within sound of I the tower, have been tolled with more or » less'consistency for over a year. Already - there may be a generation which takes > the clock for granted. We were promised t a chime, or at least a chime.was disi cussed as a possibility. JSTow, the possii bility has become actual fact. In The , Prelude" Wordsworth writes of his . sojourn*at St. John's College, Cambridge, 3 in a room that has now/been disembodied 3 in order to provide for extensions to the college kitchen. From his " snug little ; kingdom up four pair of stairs" —I trust • the intrusion from Thackeray Will be: 3 pardoned—he listened to the chimes ■of > Trinity and St. John's, and.wrote of them 1 as "a male and female voice," Dwellers . within the two-mile radius of the Town Hall in Dunedin are now informed of '■ the hour by two voices; . Slowly Dun- . edin is acquiring its academic insignia. 5 We are now a, city of chimes, if not of , dreaming spires and lost causes. , The chime which is heard from the' | University clock 'ia the standard, chime; ; which' is heard all over New Zealand. [ It is a replica of the famous chime which' ! sounds from the tower of St. Stephen's ; above the Houses, of Parliament at Westminster. This will be news to no bne who ] has been in London or has listened to- ;. the "Big Ben" chime broadcast by means of radio, There is, of course, a, difference in tone. It may be that there are chimes . in some parts of the world which exactly ; reproduce "Big Ben?' It may also be,' ! tha£ the chimes of the Dunedin Town Hall I tower follow..some .English or Scottish !■. model. It is an interesting, psychological ; fact, that many persons who have lived i within sound of the Town Hall chime are unable to reproduce the exact cadence when.challenged to- do so. They will pro- < test, "Of.course I know it," but whenrequested to whistle or otherwise to indi-, cate the sequence which denotes that it: lacks a quarter to the hour they find themselves unable to do so., . Every reader will recall the chimes j >of his native town. Immigrants from Plymouth will remember how the principal clock in that famous seaport gives out the air of " The Minstrel Boy" before striking the hour. At the university town of Cambridge, the Roman Catholic church in St. Andrew street gives 'out, an-air which curiously resembles that to which Liza Lehmann has set litzgeralds words founded on Omar Khayyam's Myself when young did eagerly frequent dictor and saint, etc." The chime of "Big Ben," which, the cables inform us, has been silent recently, are f a provocation to nostalgia. Coming as they do.from the heart of the Empire, they give out a message to exile and to fugitive alike., : l endeavoured to put the essence of Big Ben" into words in a short poem which was included in a little volume called "Best Poems in New Zealand, 1933,' -Asthis little book has probably reached but few readers of the southern: newspapers, I venture to append" it to the short essay; I ; have attempted above., It,may strike a sympathetic response from some reader who has listened to "Big Ben" from-the vicinity of Palace Yard, or from the Embankment, where so many have • lingered. I do not know whether Francis Thompson had "Big Ben" in mind when he wrote of one of his many vigils in the streets of London. In "Sister Songs" he writes of " night's slow-wheeled car" and of the hands of the clock as " barbed arrows." . . . The little verse may help to remind some reader of the links of sentiment: which, whether we like it or not, bind us to that country which, in spite of Mr Bernard Shaw, so many persist in calling "Home": "I would gather them to me," Booms Big Ben. " I would proffer a sanctuary, . / Like as a hen . . . . I Gathoreth her strident brood. ' I am sad, for I have knelled ' Bying years that have dispelled i All the good that had accrued 1 In the years less profligate. j I have watched Dawn's lover wait, . , Looking like a happy midge ) Steadied on Westminster Bridge. I have called, on nights moon-pearled, ] To the uttermost .new world ' Where some exiled soul remembers J Palace Yard all. lit with embers. s From a day's death. He has 'seen l Grave Thames like a Nubian queen' j Prinked with amber points of light.. . ( He has felt on frosty night r The aureate eye look from St. Stephen's Tower,. ' ' '' * And thought upon the Blow. years that' t deflower' ' ;'S Women of loveliness, and men of power, t And dissipate alike or dole or dower."' c Come, little chicken chimes, Big Ben is t yearning 'j Across the interdict of oceans seven. . Teach ub anew, lest we should tire of c learning The way to Westminster's th« way to V Heaven. ■ t ' ■' • ■ I