Classic Poem

Lovely companionship of school, lovely those days.
Lovely the children, so full of fun, life's reins restrain
Them for they are tender and young.
Smiles of the world they are, the fragrant scent
That breathes from the flowers of its sweet basil.
At sunrise, at sunset to and from school,
Taken like a flock to strange pastures
To an unknown shepherd with an unfamiliar crook,
To a future that binds the fetters of life,
Too strict for them and hard to bear.
. . . .

Little birds in a thicket they are, some take flight
To try out their wings, and some are unfledged;
They ride on Time's wings, not knowing the danger.
Sparrows at spelling lessons, frisky colts in the playground.
Free from all the cares of life—
These they have left to their fathers and mothers.
Around them gallops the folly of youth,
Too strong to be curbed, it has ceased the child's mind
And now has infected the teacher, till he, himself
Has become once more like a child.

Cheerful is the bell that rings for their release,
But not so cheerful when it calls them to work.
Soon that bell will be buried in a clock
Whose wheels always turn for us mortal men
Like a scorpion that lifts its sting to menace the young,
And to inject its poison into the old.
With its twin hammers Destiny
Strikes and the Fates revolve.
The satchels the children carry in their hands
Are repositories of the hidden future
In them is the man who, whether he lives or dies,
Will not be reckoned among men,
And the general, the leader, the disciple, the prophet,
He who lags at the crowd's tail, he who heads the procession.
They are dressed in a garment youth's hands have woven,
Which is more precious than gold braided velvet;
Time scratches their faces with its claws,
And makes their winsome bloom diminish,
Childhood is robbed by the prime of youth,
And youth vanishes in hoary age.
Greyness spreads slowly through the hair, as in a grass patch
Fire, encroaching the thread of life.
From book learning they turn at length
To another learning that is not recorded,
A world in which man seeks adventure,
With the armory of tooth and claw.
The rich man's son becomes a pauper;
the poor man's child attains to riches.
The child full of good health departs;
The sickly one recovers and lives.
Many a bright scholar at school
has not done so well in the lesson of life.
And gone are his schoolmates, as if he had never
Known them at all, nor yet their company,
Till they all disappear, one flock then another,
and fade like a mirage in the desert.