The Cairn

To celebrate Poetry Month, Children and Millay.

The Cairn

When I think of the little children learning
In all the schools of the world,
Learning in Danish, learning in Japanese
That two and two are four, and where the rivers of the world
Rise, and the names of the mountains and the principal cities,
My heart breaks.
Come up, children! Toss your little stones gaily
On the great cairn of Knowledge!
(Where lies what Euclid knew, a little grey stone,
What Plato, What Pascal, What Galileo:
Little grey stones, little grey stones on a cairn.)
Tell me, what is the name of the highest mountain?
Name me a crater of fire! a peak of snow!
Name me a mountain on the moon!
But the name of the mountain that you climb all day,
Ask not your teacher that.

~~Edna St Vincent Millay

Comments

[RegularMom]

Awesome!

[Blanchette]

I think I'm the totally innocent party that was told you didn't "get Edna St. Vincent Millay." I totally don't get the above poem either.
When I think of kids in school, learning 'bout the golden rule,
I never think of rocks in piles, junking up the classroom aisles. What makes Millay want those cairns,
accumulated by fretful bairns? Ne'er would Plato or Pacal consent to quarry or to haul
small gray stones to wisdom's pile.
It don't make sense.
It's not worthwhile!