Hating some as I do,

Loving some as I must,

Hoping greatly for a few

In whom I put trust,

I stare at them every day

Wondering by what way

They come now to me.

What griefs I cannot see,

And terrors, and wild joys,

Sit in the twenty skulls

Of girls and boys

Who sit before me ready

For the year's study?

Ten years of teaching dulls

Some teachers I have known

To everything but fact.

I hope never to forget

That I owe a human debt.

I swear never to act

From a need not my own,

Or truth I could not sing;

Never to tell them anything

I would not say again

As a man among men.

I have looked into their eyes

And cannot tell them lies.