Thrall*

The Last Lesson of The Afternoon

When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?

How long have they tugged the leash, and strained apart

My pack of unruly hounds: I cannot start

Them again on a quarry of knowledge they hate to hunt,

I can haul them and urge them no more.

No more can I endure to bear the brunt

Of the books that lie out on the desks: a full three score

Of several insults of blotted pages and scrawl

Of slovenly work that they have offered me.

I am sick, and tired more than any thrall

Upon the woodstacks working weariedly.

And shall I take the last dear fuel and heap it on my soul

Till I rouse my will like a fire to consume

Their dross of indifference, and burn the scroll

Of their insults in punishment? - I will not!

I will not waste myself to embers for them,

Not all for them shall the fires of my life be hot,

For myself a heap of ashes of weariness, till sleep

Shall have raked the embers clear: I will keep

Some of my strength for myself, for if I should sell

It all for them, I should hate them -

- I will sit and wait for the bell.

by D. H. Lawrence (1885 -1930)

I guess I first read this poem when I was seventeen or eighteen. I "used" it today with a class of eleven/twelve year olds after more years in the classroom than I care to remember. Suddenly, it starts to really mean something to me... "I will keep some of my strength for myself". In this most thankless of jobs, you sometimes really do feel that your life force is burning away instead of being conserved for the future. Working in a council estate school with government and local council targets to meet, A4 ringbinders full of the usual governmentally driven bumf and lots of kids with "issues" caused by poverty, marital breakdown, television and negative role modelling at home - it's virtually impossible to keep going till you're sixty. As I have often remarked, it's like being in a "shit sandwich". Who was it who sang, "I gotta get out of this place if it's the last thing I ever do". Well surely I can't go on much longer. I owe it to myself to get out. As the Hull City returnee, Nick Barmby announced after leaving Leeds United - "Money Isn't Everything!"

*Thrall = slave