Songs of Innocence and of Experience (With All the Originial Illustrations). Уильям Блейк

      The School Boy

       Table of Contents

      I love to rise in a summer morn

       When the birds sing on every tree;

       The distant huntsman winds his horn,

       And the sky-lark sings with me.

       O! what sweet company.

      But to go to school in a summer morn,

       O! it drives all joy away;

       Under a cruel eye outworn,

       The little ones spend the day

       In sighing and dismay.

      Ah! then at times I drooping sit,

       And spend many an anxious hour,

       Nor in my book can I take delight,

       Nor sit in learning's bower,

       Worn thro' with the dreary shower.

      How can the bird that is born for joy

       Sit in a cage and sing:'

       Hear can a child, when fears annoy,

       But droop his tender wing,

       And forget his youthful spring?

      O! father & mother, if buds are nip'd

       And blossoms blown away,

       And if the tender plants are strip'd

       Of their joy in the springing day,

       By sorrow and care's dismay,

      How shall the summer arise in joy,

       Or the summer fruits appearr

       Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,

       Or bless the mellowing year,

       When the blasts of winter appear?

       Plate 8