“Though the road takes you East, though the road takes you West,
Here in Kandy you’ll find the school that is the best.”
Vote of thanks delivered by the Senior Prefect T.B. Marambe, at the Trinity College Kandy Prize Giving held in the College Quadrangle on February, 1938:
Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen,
My great predecessors could not in their time,
Make a flattering speech through the channels of rhyme.
They poured forth a poem of ponderous prose,
In sentiments stilted and phrases verbose.
But a promising poet in me you shall see,
As after my speech you will all agree.
With loud acclamation and thunderous applause,
We welcome you here to our College because
Staunch is the loyalty that birds us await
The King’s representative here in our state.
We welcome your lady but where is Miss Joan?
I’m getting a wee bit familiar I own,
But by nature I’m gallant and surely I oughter,
Find a good rhyme for the Governor’s daughter.
Through this island of ours you’ve gone wide and far,
I read that in Jaffna you smoked a cigar,
Though the road takes you East, though the road takes you West,
Here in Kandy you’ll find the school that is the best.
And now that you’ve heard the speech of the wise,
And now that I’ve lauded you up to the skies,
And now that you’ve listened in startled surprise,
And commented perhaps on my stature and size.
And now that I know my friends will all say,
“Come on, Marambe, never say die!”,
Least they, like the Assyrian, in red, blue and gold,
I ask for one holiday hoping that you
Will certify strongly that we shall have two!!
This was the first time the vote of thanks was proposed in verse at a Prize-Giving. The speech was composed by Mr. Oswin Wright, a senior member of the staff. Chief Guest at the event was Sir Andrew Caldecott, Governor of Ceylon at the time, to whom the poem is mainly directed towards.
Extracted from the book ‘Glimpses into the past’.
View of the TCK Quadrangle in 1925, courtesy of the magazine ‘Trinity’.
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