Education and Knowledge

The land of scholars, and the nurse of arms. 4

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll; Chill penury repress’d their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul.

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail— Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

Stuff the head With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, Goddess, and about it.

Unlearn’d, he knew no schoolman’s subtle art, No language, but the language of the heart.

’Tis education forms the common mind: Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclin’d.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

Some are bewilder’d in the maze of schools, And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.

Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.

Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil O’er books consumed the midnight oil?

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.

And wisely tell what hour o’ th’ day The clock doth strike, by algebra.

For he by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale.

A Babylonish dialect Which learned pedants much affect.

For all a rhetorician’s rules Teach nothing but to name his tools.

He’d run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination.

He could distinguish and divide A hair ’twixt south and southwest side, On either which he would dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute.

Beside, ’tis known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak: 2 That Latin was no more difficile Than to a blackbird ’tis to whistle.

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek.

The bookish theoric.

Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

An unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractic’d; Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn.

Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.

Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy.