“Good effort,” he’d say on hearing us read our essays, before urbanely demolishing them point by point, somehow leaving us feeling it was we who had formulated his illuminations.
How we would laugh in the quad on exiting his 18th century rooms, imitating his patrician voice and manner, instantly forgetting timeless topics he’d spent his lifetime contemplating.
Forty years on, he has long passed and we too are old, reaping what we have sown in life.
We mock him no more for he has grown in stature over the years, looming over us like Shakespeare’s colossus, bestriding our narrow world.
How we would laugh in the quad on exiting his 18th century rooms, imitating his patrician voice and manner, instantly forgetting timeless topics he’d spent his lifetime contemplating.
Forty years on, he has long passed and we too are old, reaping what we have sown in life.
We mock him no more for he has grown in stature over the years, looming over us like Shakespeare’s colossus, bestriding our narrow world.
