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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SIC FRATRES HELENAE by ALFRED DENNIS GODLEY

First Line: O WHERE IS THE PASTOR AND MASTER
Last Line: INSTRUCTORS OF SCHOOLS!
Subject(s): TEACHING & TEACHERS; EDUCATORS; PROFESSORS;
O WHERE is the pastor and master
Who used to enlighten the mind?
Protect him, O Pollux and Castor,
And grant him a favouring wind!
From prose and from verse and translation
Afar has that pedagogue flown,
He is spending his Easter Vacation
With Lunn and Perowne.

From Harrow and Rugby and Clifton,
Released from the birch and the boy,
The teachers of youth are adrift on
The waves that will waft them to Troy,
To Athens, of cities the fairest,
Aegina, bright gem of the sea, --
Dear land of the Augment and Aorist,
Of @3On@1 and of @3Mh@1.

Not thus, with a Bradshaw and Murray,
The cit who's constructed his pile
Surveys in a desperate hurry
The mummies and marts of the Nile:
Not thus does the Philistine roamer,
Conducted by Cook in a gang,
Attempt to elucidate Homer
With Butcher and Lang:

Let such with a handbook provided
Revisit each classical spot:
But these by their culture are guided
(At most with a Liddell and Scott):
Untainted by cribs and by versions,
By books that are branded of Bohn,
Are those who are sent on excursions
By Lunn and Perowne.

From classical works that they're pat in,
On viewing Parnassus its peak,
They'll quote the original Latin
(If not the original Greek):
What readings they'll cite from their Cobets
At sight of Taygetus' crags,
Saluting Mycenae with 'gobbets'
And Tiryns with tags!

When'er o'er the spaces of ocean
From Cyclad to Cyclad they gad
(Still mindful that phrases of motion
Omit, with an island, the @3ad@1),
In fancy they'll dream of the classes
At home which they nurture with tips,
And @3Poinfloiboio Qalasshj@1
Will leap to their lips!

O possible picnics on Pelion
With readings from Grote or Macan,
O sights of antiquities Melian,
O pratings of pot and of pan!
O dread and despair of the digger
Who sees them arriving in swarms,
In hopes of abstracting a figure --
To show to their Forms!

Return to the tasks that recall you
From surges and shores of the East,
Your market professional value
By travel distinctly increased:
'Mid grammars we grope and we grovel,
We rot in conventional rules, --
O heal us with views that are novel,
Instructors of Schools!



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