Thursday
My four Georgia grandchildren began school this week, which for much of the world sounds outlandish. Who outside of the United States starts school in the heart of the summer?
William Blake would certainly disapprove. Check out his “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 learnings bower.
Worn thro’ with the 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 & 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 cares 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.
This isn’t Blake’s only poem involking the tragedy of birds in cages. In “Auguries of Innocence,” which is a set of Blakean proverbs, he writes,
A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
Blighted minds, Blake fears, will grow up to become blasted adults. Best to have children sing with the summer skylark.