Oh, I could weep sometimes to go to the public schools
And see little children sitting in long rows
On hard board seats!

So many hours a day away from the green lanes and butterflies,
So many hours away from the faces of mothers, the ministries of home;
Sitting, sitting, oh so patiently, expectantly—
Sitting in long rows on hard bench seats!
The smug, pleased face of the school-mistress!
The sour, lined face, the peaked, petulant neurotic face,
The doll-like, painted face of the school-mistress!
But once in a hundred times the face of a true teacher—pedagogue, leader of children
What is it all for, this wholesale incarceration of childhood?
I demand of you to show cause why it should be.
And I come to you with Nature's writ of habeas corpus,
That you release these children, sitting so patiently, pathetically—
Sitting in long rows on hard board seats.