September, The First Day Of School Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDEFF GHIJKL MNOIPP A QQRSTU KUVWXY UZA2FLP R| I | A |
| - | |
| My child and I hold hands on the way to school | B |
| And when I leave him at the first grade door | C |
| He cries a little but is brave he does | D |
| Let go My selfish tears remind me how | E |
| I cried before that door a life ago | F |
| I may have had a hard time letting go | F |
| - | |
| Each fall the children must endure together | G |
| What every child also endures alone | H |
| Learning the alphabet the integers | I |
| Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff | J |
| So arbitrary so peremptory | K |
| That worlds invisible and visible | L |
| - | |
| Bow down before it as in Joseph's dream | M |
| The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down | N |
| Before the dreaming of a little boy | O |
| That dream got him such hatred of his brothers | I |
| As cost the greater part of life to mend | P |
| And yet great kindness came of it in the end | P |
| - | |
| II | A |
| - | |
| A school is where they grind the grain of thought | Q |
| And grind the children who must mind the thought | Q |
| It may be those two grindings are but one | R |
| As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays | S |
| As from the integers comes Euler's Law | T |
| As from the whole inseperably the lives | U |
| - | |
| The shrunken lives that have not been set free | K |
| By law or by poetic phantasy | U |
| But may they be My child has disappeared | V |
| Behind the schoolroom door And should I live | W |
| To see his coming forth a life away | X |
| I know my hope but do not know its form | Y |
| - | |
| Nor hope to know it May the fathers he finds | U |
| Among his teachers have a care of him | Z |
| More than his father could How that will look | A2 |
| I do not know I do not need to know | F |
| Even our tears belong to ritual | L |
| But may great kindness come of it in the end | P |
| - | |
| - | |
| Anonymous submission | R |
Howard Nemerov
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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