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AMERICA WAS SCHOOLMASTERS

America was forests,
America was grain,
Wheat from dawn to sunset,
And rainbows trailing rain.

America was beavers,
Buffalo in seas,
Cornsilk and the johnnycake,
Songs of scythes and bees.

America was brown men
With eyes full of the sun,
But America was schoolmasters,
Tall one by lonely one.

They hewed oak, carried water,
Their hands were knuckleboned,
They piled on loads of syntax
Till the small boys groaned.

They caught a nation eager,
They caught a nation young,
They taught a nation fairness,
Thrift, and the golden tongue.

They started at the bottom
And built up strong and sweet,
They shaped our minds and morals
With switches on the seat!

        --Robert P. Tristram Coffin          

 

    

 

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