And The Skylark Sings With Me

We are in the middle of our second week of vacation from school, and I am coming to grips with the fact that I have a lot of lessons to plan! Matt is away in Boston for the week, so the kids and I have been relaxing, enjoying ourselves and not doing much of everything. Our first week of vacation was Thanksgiving, so there was a lot of running around. This week has been full of fun activities, but quieter and with a lot less driving! I am enjoying it thoroughly.

This morning I finally picked up a book I got at the lecture I attended November 4 with some homeschooling friends. The lecture was by David Albert, who is a homeschooling dad, writer, musician, and all around very cool guy. We had a wonderful afternoon and evening of talking, laughing and eating with him, hearing all sorts of stories, and learning new things. I bought several of his books to help me along in our homeschooling journey.

The one I was reading this morning is called "And the Skylark Sings With Me." I had read it long ago, when we first started homeschooling in 1999. I remember liking it and being very impressed, but not very many of the specifics. I had completely forgotten that the title of the book was taken from a poem by William Blake. William Blake? The poet of the late 16th/early 17th century? Yes, that Blake. Here is the poem:


I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn.
And the skylark sings with me.
O! What sweet company.

But to go to school on a summer morn
O! It drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour,
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn thro' with a dreary shower.

How can a bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
but droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?

O! Father and Mother, if buds are nip'd
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are strip'd
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care's dismay,

How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When blasts of winter appear?

Pretty prophetic stuff, back in a time when most people were being homeschooled!

--Jen