Poets at Play
Christine Perrin and
David Rothman, Ph.D.
Christine Perrin and
David Rothman, Ph.D.
All you guys ever do is try to measure,
As if that could tell you who you are:
“How high? How bright? How dumb? How dark? How far
Away to pain? To grief? How much for pleasure?
How long for light to travel from that star?”
But what’s the news when you get down to treasure?
When you subtract your dollars from your leisure?
Review the years since you embraced each scar?
Tonight, the shortest of the year, the moon
Is full of honey. Sunset lasts forever.
Gratuitous forgiving cannot fail:
Come on, let it be now, you ass, and soon
That lovers wander, never knowing never.
My song? It has only one word: “Hail!”
By intentionally cultivating students’ abilities to recognize and produce beautiful artifacts–music, drawings, poetry, drama, etc.–K-12 classical education provides young people with the rudiments of a beautiful life.
As Sir Roger Scruton says in his short book on the subject, “Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways.
The printmaker bursts his throat telling us about light, telling us about the hillside unveiling in sequence each new day, each hour—the sun layered like paint on groves of olives or lines of dark cypress that spill, no, are quilted, diagonally across the field.
In 1877, George Eliot wrote that she believed she had coined the term “meliorism,” meaning the belief that the world tends to improve, and we can help to improve it. The word was probably in circulation before that, but she certainly drew attention to it and is always associated with it today.
With practiced grace, Mr. Kolb tucks a violin under his chin and places the bow on the strings, and the students’ own bows–silently, instantly–leap to their own instruments. He pauses to remind them to “Walk up to the first note, don’t play it,” and then he slices the strings and they launch into “French Folk Song,” a Suzuki standby.
Virtue is the flagship publication of the Institute for Classical Education. It disseminates stories, ideas, research and experiences in classical education to readers across the nation, helping them pursue the classical ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty.
