Among School Children
* "I walk through the long schoolroom questioning." It soon becomes clear that the poet refers here not only to a room of St. Otteran's, but also to the metaphorical schoolroom that is life..."
* And yet this worship of images continues unabated. The fact is that the images stand for glorious ideals which are hardly ever attained. These idols mock at all human efforts. They are mockeries of the heart as great philosophers are mockeries of the intellect. None of them can change the facts of life or influence the course of nature...
The last stanza is an emphatic re-affirmation of the poet’s maxim that life is an organic whole made up of opposites. Just as chestnut tree is neither leaf blossom or bole but the sum total of all three, so also man is neither mind nor body nor soul but an untitled entity of the three
* Ottava Rima “… is used to give stately, meditative structure to some of the most profound
poetry of memory, mortality and art …
* Among School Children - Hanson
* Among School Children - Lensing