A School Song

Related poetry:

1. Kitchener's School 1898 Being a translation of the song that was made by a Mohammedanschoolmaster of Bengal Infantry (some time on service at Suakim)when he heard that Kitchener was taking money from the English tobuild a Madrissa for Hubshees or a college for the Sudanese. Oh Hubshee, carry your shoes in your hand and bow your head […]...
2. The God Of Common-Sense My Daddy used to wallop me for every small offense: “Its takes a hair-brush back,” said he, “to teach kids common-sense.” And still to-day I scarce can look a hair-brush in the face. Without I want in sympathy to pat a tender place. For Dad declared with unction: “Spare the brush and spoil the brat.” […]...
3. A Song of the Pen Not for the love of women toil we, we of the craft, Not for the people’s praise; Only because our goddess made us her own and laughed, Claiming us all our days, Claiming our best endeavour body and heart and brain Given with no reserve Niggard is she towards us, granting us little gain: Still, […]...
4. Three Songs To The One Burden I The Roaring Tinker if you like, But Mannion is my name, And I beat up the common sort And think it is no shame. The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about. From mountain to mountain ride the fierce […]...
5. The White Man's Burden Take up the White man’s burden Send forth the best ye breed Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child. Take up the White Man’s burden In patience to abide, To veil the […]...
6. SCHOOL SMELL Composed of chalk dust, Pencil shavings and The sharp odour Of stale urine; It meets me now and then Creeping down a creosoted corridor Or waiting to be banged With the dust from piles of books On top of a cupboard. The double desks heeled with iron Having long been replaced; The steel-nibbed pens and […]...
7. 192. Song-The Bonie Lass of Albany MY 1 heart is wae, and unco wae, To think upon the raging sea, That roars between her gardens green An’ the bonie Lass of Albany. This lovely maid’s of royal blood That ruled Albion’s kingdoms three, But oh, alas! for her bonie face, They’ve wrang’d the Lass of Albany. In the rolling tide of […]...
8. Acrostic Little maidens, when you look On this little story-book, Reading with attentive eye Its enticing history, Never think that hours of play Are your only HOLIDAY, And that in a HOUSE of joy Lessons serve but to annoy: If in any HOUSE you find Children of a gentle mind, Each the others pleasing ever Each […]...
9. Wars IN the old wars drum of hoofs and the beat of shod feet. In the new wars hum of motors and the tread of rubber tires. In the wars to come silent wheels and whirr of rods not Yet dreamed out in the heads of men. In the old wars clutches of short swords and […]...
10. The Wage-Slaves Oh, glorious are the guarded heights Where guardian souls abide Self-exiled from our gross delights Above, beyond, outside: An ampler arc their spirit swings Commands a juster view We have their word for all these things, No doubt their words are true. Yet we, the bond slaves of our day, Whom dirt and danger press […]...
11. 373. Song-The Slave's Lament IT was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral, For the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O: Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O: Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O. All on […]...
12. The Song Of The Wage-Slave When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay, I hope that it won’t be hell-fire, as some of the parsons say. And I hope that it won’t be heaven, with some of the parsons I’ve met All I want is just quiet, just to rest and forget. Look […]...
13. Solidarity Song Peoples of the world, together Join to serve the common cause! So it feeds us all for ever See to it that it’s now yours. Forward, without forgetting Where our strength can be seen now to be! When starving or when eating Forward, not forgetting Our solidarity! Black or white or brown or yellow Leave […]...
14. Among School Children I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and histories, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way – the children’s eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling […]...
15. Rule Britannia When Britain first, at Heaven’s command, Arose from out the azure main; This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: “Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.” The nations, not so blest as thee, Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall: While thou shalt flourish great and […]...
16. Advice to a young sylv-i-an dragon on going to school when you step out of the wood and go first time to school You have to be so specially careful if you’re really a dragon To put the most innocent expression on your face you can find And not flip your flappers (unless the others don’t mind) You must be very strict with yourself – […]...
17. Gallio's Song “And Gallio cared for none of these things.” Acts xviii. 17 “Little Foxes” Actions and Reactions. All day long to the judgment-seat The crazed Provincials drew All day long at their ruler’s feet Howled for the blood of the Jew. Insurrection with one accord Banded itself and woke, And Paul was about to open his […]...
18. The School of Night What did I study in your School of Night? When your mouth’s first unfathomable yes Opened your body to be my book, I read My answers there and learned the spell aright, Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess What spirits it raised nor where their questions led. Those others, familiar tenants of […]...
19. To John Donne Donne, the delight of Phoebus and each Muse Who, to thy one, all other brains refuse; Whose every work of thy most early wit Came forth example, and remains so yet; Longer a-knowing than most wits do live; And which no affection praise enough can give! To it, thy language, letters, arts, best life, Which […]...
20. Song At her Junior High School graduation, She sings alone In front of the lot of us Her voice soprano, surprising, Almost a woman’s. It is The Our Father in French, The new language Making her strange, out there, Fully fledged and Ready for anything. Sitting Together her separated Mother and father we can Hear the […]...
21. WYTHER PARK SCHOOL LEEDS FIVE I stood there in front of forty-five faces The first day of term, not especially fancying “Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic” and so instead I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky, Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper. Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl In search of her first job around London […]...
22. The Dead King (EDWARD VII.) 1910 Who in the Realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear? And, unconcerned for his own estate, toils till the last grudged sands have run? Let him approach. It is proven here Our King asks nothing of any man more than Our King himself, has done. […]...
23. Work And Joy Each day I live I thank the Lord I do the work I love; And in it find a rich reward, All price and praise above. For few may do the work they love, The fond unique employ, That fits them as a hand a glove, And gives them joy. Oh gentlefolk, do you and […]...
24. England's Answer Truly ye come of The Blood; slower to bless than to ban; Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man. Flesh of the flesh that I bred, bone of the bone that I bare; Stark as your sons shall be stern as your fathers were. Deeper than speech our love, stronger than […]...
25. In Progress Ten years ago it seemed impossible That she should ever grow so calm as this, With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well. Slow-speaking when she had some fact to tell, Silent with long-unbroken silences, Centered in self yet not unpleased to please, Gravely monotonous like a passing bell. […]...
26. A Song 1 COME, I will make the continent indissoluble; I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon; I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades. 2 I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the […]...
27. First Day at School A millionbillionwillion miles from home Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?) Why are they all so big, other children? So noisy? So much at home they Must have been born in uniform Lived all their lives in playgrounds Spent the years inventing games That don’t let me in. Games That are rough, […]...
28. Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child Shadow children, thin and small, Now the day is left behind, You are dancing on the wall, On the curtains, on the blind. On the ceiling, children, too, Peeping round the nursery door, Let me come and play with you, As we always played before. Let’s pretend that we have wings And can really truly […]...
29. Song of the Redwood-Tree 1 A CALIFORNIA song! A prophecy and indirection-a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; A chorus of dryads, fading, departing-or hamadryads departing; A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense. Farewell, my brethren, Farewell, O earth and sky-farewell, ye neighboring waters; […]...
30. A Marching Song We mix from many lands, We march for very far; In hearts and lips and hands Our staffs and weapons are; The light we walk in darkens sun and moon and star. It doth not flame and wane With years and spheres that roll, Storm cannot shake nor stain The strength that makes it whole, […]...
31. What Then? His chosen comrades thought at school He must grow a famous man; He thought the same and lived by rule, All his twenties crammed with toil; ‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’ Everything he wrote was read, After certain years he won Sufficient money for his need, Friends that have been friends indeed; ‘What […]...
32. Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen I Many ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, Protected from the circle of the moon That pitches common things about. There stood Amid the ornamental bronze and stone An ancient image made of olive wood – And gone are phidias’ famous ivories And all the golden grasshoppers and bees. […]...
33. The Children's Song Puck of Poock’s Hills Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee Our love and toil in the years to be; When we are grown and take our place As men and women with our race. Father in Heaven who lovest all, Oh, help Thy children when they call; That they may build from age […]...
34. Dream Song 110: It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that. My own clouds darkening hung. Besides, it wasn’t serious. They took them in different rooms & fed them lies. ‘She admitted you wanted to get rid of it.’ ‘He told us he told you to.’ The Force, with its rapists con-men murderers, Has been […]...
35. The Rule of the A. J. C Come all ye bold trainers attend to my song, It’s a rule of the A. J. C. You mustn’t train ponies, for that’s very wrong By the rules of the A. J. C. You have to wear winkers when crossing the street, For fear that a pony you’d happen to meet If you hear one […]...
36. A Letter From the Trenches to a School Friend I have not brought my Odyssey With me here across the sea; But you’ll remember, when I say How, when they went down Sparta way, To sandy Sparta, long ere dawn Horses were harnessed, rations drawn, Equipment polished sparkling bright, And breakfasts swallowed (as the white Of eastern heavens turned to gold) – The dogs […]...
37. Orphan School Full fifty merry maids I heard One summer morn a-singing; And each was like a joyous bird With spring-clear not a-ringing. It was an old-time soldier song That held their happy voices: Oh how it’s good to swing along When youth rejoices! Then lo! I dreamed long years had gone, They passed again ungladly. Their […]...
38. TO THE ROSE: SONG Go, happy Rose, and interwove With other flowers, bind my Love. Tell her, too, she must not be Longer flowing, longer free, That so oft has fetter’d me. Say, if she’s fretful, I have bands Of pearl and gold, to bind her hands; Tell her, if she struggle still, I have myrtle rods at will, […]...
39. Dream Song 63: Bats have no bankers and they do not drink Bats have no bankers and they do not drink And cannot be arrested and pay no tax And, in general, bats have it made. Henry for joining the human race is bats, Known to be so, by few them who think, Out of the cave. Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark, Ur-moist his cousins […]...
40. Segregation I stood beside the silken rope, Five dollars in my hand, And waited in my patient hope To sit anear the Band, And hear the famous Louie play The best hot trumpet of today. And then a waiter loafing near Says in a nasty tone: “Old coon, we don’t want darkies here, Beat it before […]...