With glee he turns, with a little glad Ecstasy of work he turns from me, An ecstasy surely sweet to be had. And very sweet while the sunlight waves In the fresh of the morning, it is to be A teacher of these young boys, my slaves Only as swallows are slaves to the eaves They build upon, as mice are slaves To the man who threshes and sows the sheaves. Oh, sweet it is To feel the lads' looks light on me, Then back in a swift, bright flutter to work, As birds who are stealing turn and flee. Touch after touch I feel on me As their eyes glance at me for the grain Of rigour they taste delightedly. And all the class, As tendrils reached out yearningly Slowly rotate till they touch the tree That they cleave unto, that they leap along Up to their lives--so they to me. So do they cleave and cling to me, So I lead them up, so do they twine Me up, caress and clothe with free Fine foliage of lives this life of mine; The lowest stem of this life of mine, The old hard stem of my life That bears aloft towards rarer skies My top of life, that buds on high Amid the high wind's enterprise. They all do clothe my ungrowing life With a rich, a thrilled young clasp of life; A clutch of attachment, like parenthood, Mounts up to my heart, and I find it good. And I lift my head upon the troubled tangled world, and though the pain Of living my life were doubled, I still have this to comfort and sustain, I have such swarming sense of lives at the base of me, such sense of lives Clustering upon me, reaching up, as each after the other strives To follow my life aloft to the fine wild air of life and the storm of thought, And though I scarcely see the boys, or know that they are there, distraught As I am with living my life in earnestness, still progressively and alone, Though they cling, forgotten the most part, not companions, scarcely known To me--yet still because of the sense of their closeness clinging densely to me, And slowly fingering up my stem and following all tinily The way that I have gone and now am leading, they are dear to me. They keep me assured, and when my soul feels lonely, All mistrustful of thrusting its shoots where only I alone am living, then it keeps Me comforted to feel the warmth that creeps Up dimly from their striving; it heartens my strife: And when my heart is chill with loneliness, Then comforts it the creeping tenderness Of all the strays of life that climb my life. III =Afternoon in School= THE LAST LESSON