Teacher poems
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King Candaules And The Doctor Of Laws
© Jean de La Fontaine
IN life oft ills from self-imprudence spring;
As proof, Candaules' story we will bring;
In folly's scenes the king was truly great:
His vassal, Gyges, had from him a bait,
The like in gallantry was rarely known,
And want of prudence never more was shown.
The Lesson
© Roger McGough
Chaos ruled OK in the classroom
as bravely the teacher walked in
the nooligans ignored him
hid voice was lost in the din
First Day at School
© Roger McGough
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
Star Teachers
© George William Russell
EVEN as a bird sprays many-coloured fires,
The plumes of paradise, the dying light
Rays through the fevered air in misty spires
That vanish in the heights.
The Desk, for Jeremy
© Michael Burch
There is a child I used to know
who sat, perhaps, at this same desk
where you sit now, and made a mess
of things sometimes. I wonder how
he learned at all ...
One Train May Hide Another
© Kenneth Koch
(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Vienna, December 1999
© Jonathan Bohrn
I watched
the winter light die from the bridge,
the sky a sinking empire's battleship,
ice floes' jagged edges
clink their cold toast
to a stilled Danube.
A poem on divine revelation
© Hugh Henry Brackenridge
This is a day of happiness, sweet peace,
And heavenly sunshine; upon which conven'd
In full assembly fair, once more we view,
And hail with voice expressive of the heart,
Story
© Stephen Dunn
Praise the odd, serendipitous world.
Nothing I'd be inclined to think of
would have stopped that dog.
Only the facts saved her.
The Teacher's Monologue
© Charlotte Bronte
The room is quiet, thoughts alone
People its mute tranquillity;
The yoke put on, the long task done,
I am, as it is bliss to be,
In A Eweleaze Near Weatherbury
© Thomas Hardy
THE years have gathered grayly
Since I danced upon this leaze
With one who kindled gayly
Love's fitful ecstasies!
From an Essay on Man
© Alexander Pope
Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
Essay on Man
© Alexander Pope
The First EpistleAwake, my ST. JOHN!(1) leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (since Life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1
© Alexander Pope
To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Psalm 119 part 4
© Isaac Watts
How shall the young secure their hearts,
And guard their lives from sin?
Thy word the choicest rules imparts
To keep the conscience clean.
Hymn 25
© Isaac Watts
All mortal vanities, begone,
Nor tempt my eyes, nor tire my ears;
Behold, amidst th' eternal throne,
A vision of the Lamb appears.
September, The First Day Of School
© Howard Nemerov
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.
Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished,--we who are about to die,
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town.
The Emergency Drill
© Chris Jones
We sat in the belly of the aeroplane
and held out for sirens to swerve across the grass;
men with cutting gear and masks. No-one came.
On a back seat, Mr. Phillips bandied jokes to pass
