What is the summary of the poem the village green?

Answer 1

"Flower School" uses the actions of flowers to show how regimented a child's life can be and how the child yearns for freedom and independence.

Answer 2

The Village Schoolmaster

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way

With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay,

There, in his mansion, skill'd to rule,

The village master taught his little school;

A man severe he was, and stern to view,

I knew him well, and every truant knew;

Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace

The days disasters in his morning face;

Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee,

At all his jokes, for many a joke had he:

Full well the busy whisper, circling round,

Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd:

Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,

The love he bore to learning was in fault.

The village all declar'd how much he knew;

'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too:

Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,

And e'en the story ran that he could gauge.

In arguing too, the person own'd his skill,

For e'en though vanquish'd he could argue still;

While words of learned length and thund'ring sound

Amazed the gazing rustics rang'd around;

And still they gaz'd and still the wonder grew,

That one small head could carry all he knew.

But past is all his fame. The very spot

Where many a time he triumph'd is forgot.

-- Oliver Goldsmith

Now, the summary is as follows:

This is an extract from a longer poem by Oliver Goldsmith called "The Deserted Village", one of the best known poems of the eighteenth century. To some extent this passage, the portrait of an agreeable village school-teacher, needs to be set in context.

The village Goldsmith is writing about he calls "Auburn": it probably wasn't a single real village, but was an imaginary ideal one, created nonetheless from villages he has observed. The village he imagined is now deserted because all the people have emigrated, the main reason being the "enclosure" or (as we would now say) privatization of their land by rich people. There was a lot of land in eighteenth-century England that was either owned in common, or which didn't have clear ownership, or which was just "waste" land. Gradually lots of it was taken into private ownership and fenced off, and in this process poor people could lose their precarious livelihoods or be displaced to towns, or in this case overseas. What was actually going on is much disputed by historians, usually because of their political differences, but what Goldsmith thought was going on is clear from what he says elsewhere in the poem: "Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide" (307).

Goldsmith returns to the village that he knew as vibrant and alive, and finds it deserted and overgrown. He remembers the good things of village life, including this affectionate if humorous portrait of the schoolmaster.

The schoolmaster is a big presence in the village. In an age when literacy and numeracy were powerful things, when many were illiterate and innumerate, then the "rustics", the ordinary working-class people of the village, look up to the school-teacher. He seems a kind of god. The children are quite scared of him. They laugh at his jokes, even if they are not funny. The adults are impressed with the way he can survey fields ("lands he could measure", 17) and how he can work out boundaries or the times of holy-days like Easter. He can even do more complex calculations ("gauge", 18). Of course, this is all ironic: the school-teacher isn't that knowledgeable - he just seems very knowledgeable to the "gazing rustics" (22).

The poem is in the form of rhyming pentameter couplets, sometimes called heroic couplets, the favourite poetic form of the eighteenth century. One ten-syllable line is followed by another, with an end rhyme straight way. This is a balanced and symmetrical verse form, in which each two lines (twenty syllables in all) make up a kind of unit of meaning: the couplet. The couplets here are mainly closed couplets, in that, for the most part, each couplet ends with a pause and is a unit of sense in itself:

Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee,

At all his jokes, for many a joke had he: � (9-10)

As you can see, that is a unit of sense, in this case a sentence: it tells us one thing, and tells it to us with a certain wit and point.

"The Village Schoolmaster" also shows other characteristics of the preferred style of the eighteenth century. The diction (or as we would say) vocabulary is carefully chosen so as not to include colloquial or vulgar words. It keeps a quietly modest but elevated tone, without any common or slang words intruding. What do you think of this style? There are also some inversions of word-order, as for instance in line 17, where the object comes before the verb: we'd say "He could measure lands". But the most important effect is still the rhythmic one, the balance of the couplet form: even the pauses in the lines can have a graceful effect. In the following couplet, the pause in the first line breaks the line after six syllables (6,4), while the concluding line of the couplet breaks the line after the fourth syllable (4,6), so creating a symmetry:

A man severe he was, and stern to view,

I knew him well, and every truant knew (5-6)

The poem's jokes are gentle jokes, wry and genial, not big belly-laughs, big gags. The tone of the poem is balanced and genial, and that geniality (full of gentleness and humour) implies a frame of mind, a way of viewing things, that Goldsmith sees as important, as having a moral value in itself.

In one sense, of course, Goldsmith is gently mocking the schoolmaster: he's a big fish in a small pond - it's very easy for him to impress the villagers with his learning, just because he can read a bit of Latin and knows how to do his sums. The parson, as the religious leader of the village, is of course the most respected man, but the schoolmaster loves a good argument with him, and keeps arguing even when he's obviously lost (19-20). On the other hand, this is a loving, endearing portrait. Here's a man who (beneath it all) is really modest and doing a good job in a quiet and simple place: helping to spread a little literacy and numeracy among the ordinary people of the village, helping them out in doing calculations about "terms" and so forth. He's at the centre of a community - and Goldsmith is mourning the passing away of that community, the passing away of the village itself, now run-down and deserted. That's why the lovely yellow flowers on the furze are "unprofitably gay" (2) - there is now no-one about to enjoy their beauty. The schoolmaster is gone long ago, with all the children of his school. A fine community has been lost.

So, this is an affectionate portrait of a community that is no more, and the school-house now deserted. The affectionate portrait of the schoolmaster is a part of this world that has passed away. Some think of Goldsmith as a relatively light poet, not particularly profound. "Goldsmith threw a sunshine over all his pictures," said Robert Southey, and Thomas Carlyle said he was "pure, clear, generous" but that he lacked "depth or strength". Do you agree? This may be quite light verse, but it is brimful of moral values: the schoolmaster is, no doubt, a little pompous, but - though he mocks that - Goldsmith shows us a good man, doing a good job and being quietly useful to the community about him. And that is part of his larger meaning.

Oliver Goldsmith felt that England was becoming obsessed with trade and creating wealth, and that in this new imperial, capitalist England the ordinary rural poor were getting a raw deal. He wrote his poem to warn again "the rage of gain," in other words the useless over-accumulation of wealth that set wealth over people. The schoolmaster is part of that good world that be believes is being done away with, the "spirit" of England before the "spirit" of capitalism took hold. He creates an affectionate portrait that implies the modest, truthful, humble world of community that he admires best.

Answer 3

Lines 1, 2

The opening line of the poem uses an image to contrast the slum children's faces with those of others. The image used is 'gusty waves' indicating brightness, verve and animation. But these are missing from faces of these children. The next image of 'rootless weeds' produces double effect. 'Weeds' indicate being unwanted and 'rootless' indicates not belonging. The slum children are like 'rootless weeds' unwanted by society and not belonging to society. Their uncombed hair fall on their pale faces.

Lines 3 to 8

Next, a few of the slum children are described. There is a tall girl whose head is weighed-down with sadness, disinterestedness or shame or a mixture of all the three. She is probably over-aged for the class. Another boy is thin, emaciated like paper and his eyes pop out from his thin body looking furtive like rat's eyes. He seems to have inherited stunted and twisted growth of bones from his father. Spender has used the word 'reciting' to show that instead of studying/reciting, a normal activity in school, the boy had only his inherited crippling disease to show/recite in the class. This could suggest that the boy's condition seem to have arisen because of his poverty especially his inability to avail heath services at the right time. Right at the back of the badly lit room is an unnoticed young boy. He is probably too young for poverty to have stifled his childish imagination. He daydreams of the squirrel's game and about the tree house, absent mentally from the classroom.

Lines 9 to 12

Spender then describes the classroom. The word 'sour' used to describe the cream walls of the classroom indicates its derelict condition. Contradicting this state and the slum children are Shakespeare's head indicating erudition, the picture of a clear sky at dawn and a beautiful Tyrolese valley indicating beauty of nature and hope, dome of an ancient city building standing for civilization and progress and a world map awarding the children the world. The lines "Open-handed map / Awarding the world its world" could refer to the map of the world hanging on the wall of the classroom giving/showing (awarding) everyone (the world) the world out there to explore and know (its world).

Lines 13 to 16

But the world of the slum children is the limited world that can be seen though the windows of the classroom and not what the map promises. All these seem ironic when contrasted with the misery and hopeless condition of the slum children. Their future is foggy, bleak and dull. Their life/world is confined within the narrow streets of the slum enclosed by the dull sky far away from rivers, seas that indicate adventure and learning and from the stars that stand for words that can empower their future. 'Lead sky' means a dullsky or a dimly lit sky. This symbolises the bleak, dull life and future of the slum children.

Lines 17 to 24

The poet feels that the head of Shakespeare and the map are cruel temptations for these children living in cramped houses (holes), whose lives revolve around (slyly turns) dullness (fog) and hopelessness (endless night) as they imagine and long for (steal) adventure(ships), for a better future (sun) and for love. Their emaciated wasted bodies compared to slag (waste) heaped together seemed to be wearing the clothes of skin covering their peeping bones and wearing spectacles of steel with cracked glasses looking like bottle bits mended. The slum is their map as big as the doom of the city buildings and their life (time and space) foggy and dim. The poet repeatedly uses the word fog to talk about the unclear, vague and dull life of the slum children.

Lines 25 to 32

The only hope of a life beyond the slums that enclose their lives like catacombs is some initiative by the governor, inspector of schools or a visitor. The poem ends with the poet fervently hoping that slum children will have access to better education and a better way of life. He uses the words 'Break o break open' to say that they have to break out from the miserable hopeless life of the slum world so that they can wander beyond the slums and their town on to the green fields and golden sands (indicating the unlimited world). These can become their teacher and like dogs lapping up food hungrily, they can learn directly (run naked) from the open pages (leaves) of nature and the world which is sustained (whose language) by the sun standing for energy and life.

Answer 4

The theme of the poem "THE VILLAGE SCHOOL MASTER" is that teachers never intentionally hurt the students . They always want there students to work hard and make there future bright. The other thing in this poem is that we should always the person who is really learned one and respect its knowledge.

Answer 5

The school boy was originally published in the Songs of Innocence. Blake put this poem in The Song of Experience when the combine volume was published. This poem is appropriate in Songs of Experience as we find the elements of restriction imposed on the care free life of the school boy.

The poem marks with the freshness of summer morning though the first few lines provide a fragrance of Innocence, there is a spontaneous fill of restriction. The boy summons his liking to be one with the birds and be in the distant fields blowing the huntsman clarion. The moments of euphoria curtained in the clouds of experience. The boy has to go with the bitter memories of attending his school and the tiring lectures. It drives all the vigor and vitality of summer that he has drunk making him droops in front of the cruel eyes of teacher from the daylong thraldom

Answer 6

The poem is a dialogue between an Indian mother and her daughter. It is the voice of a mother pleading for her daughter to wait for her betrothed to arrive and the voice of the daughter who wishes to run off to the forest and remain a child.

Answer 7

"Flower School" uses the actions of flowers to show how regimented a child's life can be and how the child yearns for freedom and independence.

Answer 8

yes