On Education

Woe to those men who by their pride
Clutch for the young that they might warp their minds
And take away worth; an eminent design
Is not a way of life, nor can fledglings grow
When light is left to darkness; the bitter fruit they sow
Stands with silent questioning before their souls
And mocks them with a nightmare of their dreams.
Life is not for toil nor the hollow shadow
Of a public lot, nor the breeding of a finer race
By a stable poring; greatness is not the muscled form
That brainless sees the game as glory and the rush
Of a fierce field the worth of true renown.
Men are not made as calculated chattels, to move
And plot into a rational sign; nor burden-beasts
To burrow into the heart of matter and emergent rise
Triumphant with the dross of earthly things.
We cannot teach with vanity nor learn from fools
Who scoff at trembling limbs bewitched with passion,
To be rested with the oil of reason, for 'tis fashion
To crawl with Freud into recessed nooks and crannies
That is now the soul; we have a psycho-love
And an analysis of dreamt that speaks with pleasure
Of things better left unspoken; this prehensile delving,
This poor vestige of distortion that cast the ape
In to unhonoured greatness and men to a wretched past.
If they can bear the thought of hanging trees and crouched
Dipping in a distant pool they are of the beings
Who bay the moon with fear of ancestral shadows
And teach the granting of a grime-filled plot.
And a child's eyes are filled not with the wonder
That is the joy of life and the innocence of mystery
Undelved; for there is no seeking when the light
Spells forth the darkness and all of destiny
Is hinged and moulded by the touch of impure hands.

—A.A.N.