THE IRISH SCHOOLMASTER. I. ALACK! 'tis melancholy theme to think How Learning doth in rugged states abide, And, like her bashful owl, obscurely blink, In pensive glooms and corners, scarcely spied; Not, as in Founders' Halls and domes of pride, Served with grave homage, like a tragic queen, But with one lonely priest compell'd to hide, In midst of foggy moors and mosses green, In that clay cabin hight the College of Kilreen! II. This College looketh South and West alsoe, Crazy and crack'd they be, and wind doth blow Which Dan, with many paines, makes whole again 66 Outside and in, tho' broke, yet so he mendeth each. III. And in the midst a little door there is, Whereon a board that doth congratulate With painted letters, red as blood I wis, “CHILDREN TAKEN IN TO BATE:" In midst of sounds of Latin, French, and Greek, Which, all i' the Irish tongue, he teacheth them to speak. IV. For some are meant to right illegal wrongs, And some for Doctors of Divinitie, Whom he doth teach to murder the dead tongues, And soe win academical degree; But some are bred for service of the sea, For mickle waste he counteth it would be To stock a head with bookish wares at all, Only to be knocked off by ruthless cannon ball. V. Six babes he sways,- -some little and some big, Divided into classes six ;-alsoe, He keeps a parlour boarder of a pig, That in the College fareth to and fro, And picketh up the urchins' crumbs below,- And raise the wonderment of many a learned man. VI. Alsoe, he schools some tame familiar fowls, But on the branches of no living tree, And overlook the learned family ; While, sometimes, Partlet, from her gloomy perch, Drops feather on the nose of Dominie, Meanwhile, with serious eye, he makes research In leaves of that sour tree of knowledge-now a birch. VII. No chair he hath, the awful Pedagogue, But sitteth lowly on a beechen log, Secure in high authority and dread : Large, as a dome for learning, seems his head, Because his locks are so unkempt and red, No laurel crown he wears, howbeit his cap is baise, VIII. And, underneath, a pair of shaggy brows Well nourish'd with Pierian Potheen, For much he loves his native mountain dew ; But to depict the dye would lack, I ween, A bottle-red, in terms, as well as bottle-green. IX. As for his coat, 'tis such a jerkin short Of his own naked fleecy hosierie : Two sandals, without soles, complete his cap-a-pie. |