An Old Man’s Thought of School by Walt Whitman

An Old Man’s Thought of School

[The following poem was recited personally by the author
Saturday afternoon, October 31, at the inauguration
of the fine new Cooper Public School, Camden, New Jersey]

An old man’s thought of school;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and
blooms that youth itself cannot,

Now only do I know you!
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the
grass!

And these I see—these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning—these young lives,
Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships—immortal
ships!
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the Soul’s voyage.

Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a public school?

Ah! more—infinitely more;
(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this
pile of brick and mortar—these dead floors,
windows, rails—you call the church?
Why this is not the church at all—the church is
living, ever living souls.”)

And you, America,
Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
The lights and shadows of your future—good or evil?
This Union multiform, with all its dazzling hopes
and terrible fears?
Look deeper, nearer, earlier far—provide ahead—
counsel in time;
Not to your verdicts of election days—not to your
voters look,
To girlhood, boyhood look—the teacher and the
school.

Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
Poem: An Old Man’s Thought of School
Published in THE DAILY GRAPHIC, NEW YORK, Tuesday, November 3, 1874

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

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