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[Page 22]
THE MISERABLE LIFE OF A PEDAGOGUE.
1 To form the manners of our youth,
2 To guide them in the way of truth,
3 To lead them through the jarring schools,
4 Arts, sciences, and grammar rules;
5 Is certainly an arduous work,
6 Enough to tire out Jew or Turk;
[Page 23]7 And make a christian bite his nails,
8 For do his best, he surely fails;
9 And spite of all that some may say,
10 His praise is trifling as his pay.
11 FOR my part I, tho' vers'd in booking,
12 Still sav'd my carcase from such cooking;
13 And always slyly shunn'd a trade,
14 Too trifling as I thought and said;
15 But at a certain crazy season,
16 When men have neither sense or reason:
17 By some confounded misadventure,
18 I found myself just in it's centre.
19 ODD'S fish and blood, and noun and neuter,
20 And tenses present, past and future;
21 I utter'd with a wicked sigh,
22 Where are my brains, or where am I?
23 The dullest creature of the wood,
24 Knows how to shun the distant flood;
25 Whales, dolphins, and a hundred more,
26 Are not the fools to run ashore.
27 WELL, now contented I must be,
28 Forc'd by the dame Necessity,
29 Who like the tribunal of Spain,
30 Let's you speak once, but not again;
[Page 24]31 And swift to execute the blow,
32 Ne'er tells you why or whence it's so:
33 Now I am ask'd a thousand questions,
34 Of ALEXANDERS and EPHESTIONS;
35 With fly design to know if I
36 Am vers'd in GRECIAN history;
37 And then again my time destroy,
38 With aukward grace to tell of TROY:
39 From that huge giant POLYPHEMUS,
40 Quite down to ROMULVS and REMUS.
41 Then I'm oblig'd to give them lectures,
42 On quadrants, circles, squares and sectors;
43 Or in my wretched mem'ry bear,
44 What weighs a cubic inch of air.
45 "SIR, here's my son, I beg you'd mind,
46 The graces have been very kind,
47 And on him all their blessings shed,
48 [Except a genius and a head]
49 Teach him the doctrine of the sphere,
50 The sliding circle and the square,
51 And starry worlds, I know not where:
52 And let him quickly learn to say,
53 Those learned words Penna, Pennae;
[Page 25]54 Which late I heard our parson call,
55 As learning, knowledge all in all."
56 AND there a city dame approaches,
57 Known by her horsemen, chairs and coaches:
58 "Sir, here's my son, teach him to speak
59 The Hebrew, Latin, and the Greek:
60 And this I half forgot, pray teach
61 My tender boy — the parts of speech —
62 But never let this son of me,
63 Learn that vile thing Astronomy:
64 Upon my word it's all a sham," —
65 O I'm your humble servant ma'am.
66 There certainly is something,in it—
67 "Boy, drive the coach off in a minute."
68 And thus I'm left in street or road,
69 A laughing stock to half the crowd,
70 To argue with myself the case,
71 And prove its being to my face.
72 A plague I say on such employment,
73 Where's neither pleasure nor enjoyment:
74 Whoe'er to such a life is ty'd,
75 Was born the day he should have dy'd;
76 Born in an hour when angry spheres
77 Were tearing caps, or pulling ears:
[Page 26]78 And Saturn slow 'gainst swift Mercurius,
79 Was meditating battles furious;
80 Or comets with their blazing train,
81 Decreed their life, a life of pain.
Source edition
Freneau, Philip Morin, 1752-1832. The American village, a poem. : To which are added, several other original pieces in verse. / By Philip Freneau, A.B. ; [Two lines in Latin from Horace.] New-York: Printed by S. Inslee and A. Car, on Moor's Wharf., 1772 M,DCC,LXXII., pp. 22-26. [2], 27, [1] p. ; (4to) (OTA N09742)
Editorial principles
The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.