Duncan Ferguson, Glasgow University undergraduate, 1971-5, and occasional West End gallivanter, remembers Gilmore at the start of the New Year, Old Calendar style, in mid-January, “reminiscing indulgently on that tantalising symmetry of bacchanalian revelling and intellectual pursuits.”
ALUMNUS GLASGUENSIS
Meanderings of a student’s January day, c. 1972
(or Carmina Burana meets Byres Road)
~
Wending my studious way
after an aubade or two
in the snow-carpeted Botanics
alma mater bound
heading to borrow
Highland history books
from Baillie’s library;
then prose composition having been completed
enamoured by the tale of Aeneas and Dido
in the Humanity classroom
of that austere quadrangle
redolent of four principal parts;
later sitting at the feet of Edwin Morgan
waxing lyrical on Browning;
occasionally forsaking the round Reading Room
and the Murray Classical laden
with texts of Aristophanes and other Greek greats
following the flow of the Kelvin
to less rigorous pursuit of
extra-curricular Gaelic culture
with pibrochs galore in The Park
a watering-haven for the Mitchell
that civic treasure trove of tomes
~
Then on the homeward trail we spy
The Aragon - fond oasis for those still dry
~
Finally, as the midwinter moon lit up Gilmorehill
we would sup poetically in The Rubaiyat
with nightcaps and nocturnes
~
There then was learning in another time
‘Via, Veritas, Vita’ it seems to chime
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