I clasp them, is because they die.
We shall later on take some of the purely Greek work of Cory for study, but I want now to interest you in the more modern part of it. The charm of the following passage you will better feel by remembering that the writer was then a schoolmaster at Eton, and that the verses particularly express the love which he felt for his students—a love the more profound, perhaps, because the circumstances of the teacher’s position obliged him to appear cold and severe, obliged him to suppress natural impulses of affection and generosity. The discipline of the masters in English public schools is much more severe than the discipline to which the students are subjected. The boys enjoy a great deal of liberty. The masters may be said to have none. Yet there are men so constituted that they learn to greatly love the profession. The title of this poem is “Reparabo,” which means “I will atone.”
The world will rob me of my friends,
For time with her conspires;
But they shall both, to make amends,
Relight my slumbering fires.
For while my comrades pass away
To bow and smirk and gloze,
Come others, for as short a stay;
And dear are these as those.