One minute, it is stern and austere, issuing a melancholy, brooding nocturne. The next, it is light and cheerful, as the crystal melody of a Mozart sonatina fills the air. From the top of Harkness Tower, the whole of Yale is laid out in miniature. Down on the campus, everywhere, there is motion. Birds, no larger than specks of wind-blown fluff, wing across the lawn.
People stride or trundle down ribbons of stone sidewalk.
Others sit motionless or clump in groups on the verdant rectangle that is Old Campus. Three horizons are touched by a seemingly endless expanse of forest land, and the fourth is an ever-shifting surface of the great Atlantic. The colleges are neat patchworks of timeless stone and next to their gothic elegance, apartment buildings squat in sullen silence. A cylindrical tank in the distance winks in a brilliant flash of silver. Yet Harkness Tower stands, a child of the present and a monument to a glorious past.