Merry Wanderers

Our Writer in Residence, Mr Steven Jackson has written a poem inspired by a Queen Anne's alumna and her experience performing as Puck from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' on the front lawn in 1919.

This poem is a fantastic piece to accompany our Reunion Day held on Saturday 27 April 2024

Merry Wanderers

I hope to come back and see on the front lawn at QAS the very tree I climbed as Puck a hundred years ago.

(Margaret ‘Peggy’ Webster, QAS ‘Old Girl’ and Head of Wilkins, 1922)

I do not know if your tree stands today –

the very tree you climbed one hundred years

ago, as Puck, in the Midsummer play

on the old school front lawn. But, like the cheers

and tears you conjured (no doubt) in the crowd

that day, perhaps, it lives on, rooted

in the memory alone; in a memory endowed

and preserved, not altered or transmuted;

in the living history of our school.

I do not know if your tree stands today;

but others continue to grow, under whose cool

shades present students sit and muse away –

who’ll move on, make room, one day, for those

next crops of scholars and teeming brains bright –

the future Pucks, where the willow grows:

our next merry wand’rers of the night.

- Writer in Residence, Mr Jackson