Love Poems and Others/The Schoolmaster
THE SCHOOLMASTER
I
A Snowy Day in School
All the slow school hours, round the irregular hum of the class,Have pressed immeasurable spaces of hoarse silenceMuffling my mind, as snow muffles the sounds that passDown the soiled street. We have pattered the lessons ceaselessly—
But the faces of the boys, in the brooding, yellow lightHave shone for me like a crowded constellation of stars,Like full-blown flowers dimly shaking at the night,Like floating froth on an ebbing shore in the moon.
Out of each star, dark, strange beams that disquiet:In the open depths of each flower, dark restless drops:Twin bubbles, shadow-full of mystery and challenge in the foam’s whispering riot:—How can I answer the challenge of so many eyes!
The thick snow is crumpled on the roof, it plunges downAwfully. Must I call back those hundred eyes?—A voiceWakes from the hum, faltering about a noun—My question! My God, I must break from this hoarse silence
That rustles beyond the stars to me.—There,I have startled a hundred eyes, and I must lookThem an answer back. It is more than I can bear.
The snow descends as if the dull sky shookIn flakes of shadow down; and through the gapBetween the ruddy schools sweeps one black rook.
The rough snowball in the playground stands huge and stillWith fair flakes settling down on it.—Beyond, the townIs lost in the shadowed silence the skies distil.
And all things are possessed by silence, and they can broodWrapped up in the sky’s dim space of hoarse silenceEarnestly—and oh for me this class is a bitter rood.
II
The Best of School
The blinds are drawn because of the sun, And the boys and the room in a colourless gloom Of under-water float: bright ripples run Across the walls as the blinds are blown To let the sunlight in; and I, As I sit on the beach of the class alone, Watch the boys in their summer blouses, As they write, their round heads busily bowed: And one after another rouses And lifts his face and looks at me, And my eyes meet his very quietly, Then he turns again to his work, with glee.
With glee he turns, with a little glad Ecstasy of work he turns from me, An ecstasy surely sweet to be had.
And very sweet while the sunlight waves In the fresh of the morning, it is to be A teacher of these young boys, my slaves Only as swallows are slaves to the eaves They build upon, as mice are slaves To the man who threshes and sows the sheaves.
Oh, sweet it is To feel the lads’ looks light on me, Then back in a swift, bright flutter to work, As birds who are stealing turn and flee.
Touch after touch I feel on me As their eyes glance at me for the grain Of rigour they taste delightedly.
And all the class, As tendrils reached out yearningly Slowly rotate till they touch the tree That they cleave unto, that they leap along Up to their lives—so they to me.
So do they cleave and cling to me, So I lead them up, so do they twine Me up, caress and clothe with free Fine foliage of lives this life of mine; The lowest stem of this life of mine, The old hard stem of my life That bears aloft towards rarer skies My top of life, that buds on high Amid the high wind’s enterprise.
They all do clothe my ungrowing life With a rich, a thrilled young clasp of life; A clutch of attachment, like parenthood, Mounts up to my heart, and I find it good.
And I lift my head upon the troubled tangled world, and though the painOf living my life were doubled, I still have this to comfort and sustain,I have such swarming sense of lives at the base of me, such sense of livesClustering upon me, reaching up, as each after the other strivesTo follow my life aloft to the fine wild air of life and the storm of thought,And though I scarcely see the boys, or know that they are there, distraughtAs I am with living my life in earnestness, still progressively and alone,Though they cling, forgotten the most part not companions, scarcely knownTo me—yet still because of the sense of their closeness clinging densely to me,And slowly fingering up my stem and following all tinilyThe way that I have gone and now am leading, they are dear to me.
They keep me assured, and when my soul feels lonely, All mistrustful of thrusting its shoots where only I alone am living, then it keeps Me comforted to feel the warmth that creeps Up dimly from their striving; it heartens my strife: And when my heart is chill with loneliness, Then comforts it the creeping tenderness Of all the strays of life that climb my life.
III
Afternoon in School
The Last Lesson
When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?How long have they tugged the leash, and strained apartMy pack of unruly hounds: I cannot startThem again on a quarry of knowledge they hate to hunt,I can haul them and urge them no more.No more can I endure to bear the bruntOf the books that lie out on the desks: a full three scoreOf several insults of blotted pages and scrawlOf slovenly work that they have offered me.I am sick, and tired more than any thrallUpon the woodstacks working weariedly.
And shall I takeThe last dear fuel and heap it on my soulTill I rouse my will like a fire to consumeTheir dross of indifference, and burn the scrollOf their insults in punishment?—I will not!I will not waste myself to embers for them, Not all for them shall the fires of my life be hot,For myself a heap of ashes of weariness, till sleepShall have raked the embers clear: I will keepSome of my strength for myself, for if I should sellIt all for them, I should hate them— —I will sit and wait for the bell.
Turnbull and Spears, Printers, Edinburgh