O'Neil commemorates presidential inauguration with sonnet

This spring, as USI prepared to officially welcome its fourth president, Dr. Ronald S. Rochon, Dr. David O'Neil, assistant professor of English, and his wife prepared to welcome their second daughter, Iris. Over a few sleepless nights, O'Neil composed a sonnet inspired by the two events-so different, yet both profoundly life-changing.

"I was reflecting on the work of building a home-on what we had done to fulfill our dreams, as well as the plans we were making fur the future," O'Neil told the USI Board of Trustees before revealing his poem. "I saw this same inflection point in the inauguration of USI's fourth president."

Knowing the importance Dr. Rochon places on family-both his own and his University family-O'Neil wanted to showcase "the linking of the personal and the public" as he celebrated the growth of his family and that of the University.

"The poem is about the birth of my second daughter, and the building of a family home," he said. "And it's also about the building of our great University, my new home."

"The Draughtsman's Dream"

In Honor of the Inauguration of USI's Fourth President

That hour when masons first roll out their plans,

They glimpse the structure of the draughtsman's mind,

Midwifed in clay by their own shaky hands

In longing for the promised blueprint lines.

All nascent vision's fired in silver glass,

In echoes of a young, expectant home,

Green-timbered like the lithe, unsteady mast

That tacks into a windswept, fraught unknown.

Do you remember it? When hopes were joined,

Our founding vision vaulting in a surge

Of mortared bricks? That bright, exultant joy

When-flash!-the draughtsman's clay-stacked dream emerged?

That labor's passed. Now come, let's build our home.

Past plans take shape when present plans take hold.