Amherst Magazine

The professors and administrators named in Humphries' poem are:

  • John Franklin Genung, who taught English and biblical literature, 1882-1917;
  • Edwin A. Grosvenor (1867), who taught modern government and international law from 1891-1914 and gave a traditional final lecture called "The Iron Crown of Lombardy";
  • Harry Welton Kidder (1897), who was assistant treasurer from 1900-09 and treasurer 1909-1931;
  • Paul Dyess Weathers '15, who was treasurer 1941-64;
  • William Seymour Tyler (1830), who taught Latin and Greek languages and Greek literature from 1832-93 and was the college historian;
  • George Daniel Olds, who taught mathematics, 1891-1927 and was president of the college from 1924-27;
  • Charles E. Garman (1872), who taught mental philosophy, moral philosophy and metaphysics from 1880-1907;
  • J. Alfred Guest '33, who was secretary of the alumni council from 1946-71 and secretary of the Board of Trustees from 1947-74;
  • Horace W. Hewlett '36, who was director of public relations from 1947-58 and secretary of the college from 1958-77.

Annotations by Daria D'Arienzo, head of Archives and Special Collections

The Acropolis of Amherst College

The following poem was first published in the Amherst Alumni News, Volume XV, No. 4, Spring, 1963, as a sidebar to David Tannous '64's article "A Short History of Walker Hall."

For Walker Hall, 1870 - 1963

(With apologies to the shade of Oliver Wendell Holmes, but
recalling the motto on the south wall of Professor Genung's
second-floor classroom: "Qui novit, neque id quod sentit exprimit,
perinde est ac si nesciret." ["He who knows but cannot express what he knows might as well be ignorant."])

Aye, tear her Monson granite down,
Long has it soared on high,
And many an eye has winced to see
Her vanes against the sky.
Beneath them rung Bib. Lit (GENUNG),
And GROSVIE's Iron Crown,
That dwelling, fit for crownèd truth,
From air now topples down.

Her halls once red with KIDDER's ink,
Or black with Weathers' rage,
No more embarrass TYLER's claim,
"The glory of the age."
Where OLDS and GARMAN used to teach,
And GUEST and HEWLETT toil,
Those offices of high emprise
Are level, now, with soil.

Ah, better that her shattered bulk
Should sink beneath the sod,
And her demolished Gothic haunt
The scholars of the quad.
Let, once again, a Day of Mark
Commemorate her fall,
And quake and cloud lament, Farewell,
Fond eyesore, Walker Hall!

—Rolfe Humphries '15

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