School / Winifred Welles

School

His seat was by a window. So he dreamed.
How could he study while the sunlight gleamed
In small, sweet shapes, like wild things tame enough
To dart to him and touch his hands for love?
While there were profiles carved in every cloud
To mark as grim or ludicrous or proud,
And agile shadowings to writhe and crawl
Like ghostly spiders up and down the wall,
He could not help but turn their way to look.
His eyes, that would not follow down his book
The muddy trudgings of deliberate words,
Reflected blue and silver flights of birds.
You would not think there was so much to trace
Of wonderment on just a window space.
But once, when a frail scrap of paper moon
Enchanted him from ten o'clock, till noon,
They moved him to the middle of the room.
He learned his lesson then for very gloom,
Until, came glowing to a nearby chair,
A little girl with sunset in her hair.
His soul recolored. The forlorn dreams came
To warm themselves once more at this new flame.
He pushed aside the dusty Greek. He had
A different way to read the Iliad.
While through cold ashes others groped to learn,
He lit the towers of Troy and saw them burn.

~~
Winifred Welles (1893-1939)
from The Hesitant Heart, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Winifred Welles biography

 "School" read by A stranger to a stranger.

The School Boy / William Blake

The School Boy

I love to rise in a summer morn, 
    When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
    And the skylark sings with me:
    O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,-
    O! It drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
    The little ones spend the day
    In sighing and dismay.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
    And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
    Nor sit in learning's bower,
    Worn through with dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
    Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
    But droop his tender wing,
    And forget his youthful spring!

O father and mother if buds are nipped,
    And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
    Of their joy in the springing day,
    By sorrow and care's dismay,-

How shall the summer arise in joy,
    Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
    Or bless the mellowing year,
    When the blasts of winter appear?

~~
William Blake (1757-1827)
from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1794

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Blake biography

"The School Boy" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy Richard Mitchley - Topic.

Vitai Lampada / Henry Newbolt

Vitai Lampada

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night –
Ten to make and the match to win –
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote –
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red,–
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;–
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the School is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind  –
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

~~
Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938), 1892
from Admirals All, 1897

Vitai Lampada: "They pass on the torch of life"

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Henry Newbolt biography

"Vitai Lampada" read by Colin Pearce. Courtesy Clemson Institute.

Balance / Michael G. Munoz

Balance

The piano player plays a French number
Right out of an old black and white French movie
The dancers of my daughter's junior ballet
Pirouette right on cue
While I sit, writing,
In a plastic chair against the wall.
The mothers in the lobby listen to the music,
Intently watching their daughters
Like a tabby watches a sparrow hop.
The teacher yells instruction to keep time.
When I look up, in contemplation,
Mothers smile at me,
I smile back at them.

I used to like this part of town,
Old Torrance.
Pawn shops, dingy hotel rooms, liquor stores,
Vacuum repair, Mexican restaurants,
Locksmiths, used record stores, dark bars.
The town is in its fourth or fifth reincarnation
Having died off many times before
Only to be brought back to life by
Shedding off the Pussycat Theater
And exchanging it with Senior Living Condos
As it waits on the next benevolence of death.

I used to sit in an Irish bar around the corner
For the hour and a half it took
While she danced,
Drinking Guinness with a fatherly devotion
Watching stupid soccer matches between countries
That got mowed down
75 years ago.
But I've stopped drinking for now
And so I wait and try to write
In the front lobby of the Ballet School
But now this room smells sour
Like milk gone bad or maybe it's sweat
Or maybe it's just me.
The accompanist plays another French number
The teacher blares out more instruction
As the music rises and falls.

Now it's my turn . . .
I start to write, furiously,
Trying to keep up to the music.
I try to write a barroom story
But it's hopeless
For there's no art in saloons
The barstool is not an easel
And there's no balance to the stagger of a drunk
No beauty to a woman's dumbstruck melancholic face
No interplay of light and shadows there
Nothing sublime
To the perfect pour of a bartender
Or the mad mad broken-up lovers
Who have just leapt gracefully
Over the edge of their despair and into the streets,
Back to the four walls of loneliness
They call home.

I look up from my pages
Just as my little swan
Leaps and turns,
Her face a rictus of concentration.
She practices at grace,
Practices at the defiance of gravity,
Practices at control and poise,
While I would no more practice at my failures
Than a snake would practice his slither.
And now the music fades on the old spinet piano
And my baby
With a flourish of arms
And the point of her leg
Finishes her dance.

I could write
For a thousand years
And never
Capture
In words
The balance of her beauty.

~~
Michael G. Munoz
October 2010
California, U.S.A.

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]