On behalf of the Shakespeare Club of Western Australia, our president,
Frances, accepted the honour of speaking at June Hatton's funeral last month.
June belonged to the Perth Shakespeare Club for many years, and was one of our
most knowledgeable members. Much-loved by her fellow members, not just for her scholarship
and her lovely reading, but for her gentleness, humour and modesty, June passed
away after a short illness and her death was shock to us all. She will be
sorely missed at our meetings.
Frances was asked to represent the club and to offer a reading in memory
of June, acknowledging her love of all poetry. This is what Frances said:
As you have
heard, June was for many years a member of the Shakespeare Club of WA – an
influential member, held in fond and high regard by us all. We valued
June for her unfailingly enthusiastic support for all the Club's activities; we
respected her scholarship and the keen insights she brought to the texts we
were studying, and we enjoyed her gentle charm and kindly humour.
On behalf of
all our members I have selected ‘The Windhover’, by Gerard Manley Hopkins as a
tribute to June's special awareness and appreciation of fine language and
literature, and particularly to acknowledge her well-known delight in the
poetic imagery of the senses and the natural world. I believe that the joyous
delicacy of this poem reflects much of June's own spirit, and her gentle but
acute sensitivities.
I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of
daylight’s dauphin, dapple-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend; the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend; the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride,
plume, here
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it; sheer plod makes plough down
sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Vale, June.
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