Honor the Children and Their Teachers!
Oh, little girls of Morganville,
From the first ones to the last ones,
Like first violets in the orchards,
Like pink roses every May,
Every year we watch new blossoms
Cling a moment to the stem,
One short moment to each parent,
One Spring moment's fragrant promise,
Lovely daughters in their morning!
Then they graduate, and leave us,
Blow a kiss and dance away!
Miss Viola Belle - Miss Pettey
Sixty years ago September
Taught you ABC's - remember?
Bought that plush cape with the money
Taught a Miller and a Silver and an Anderson to read.
(Someday we must have a pageant
Of our school days - nothing else!)
Tonight we take one picture
From a text book for its contrast
Of what they learn today of Greece.
Once in our isolation
We read the ghostly classics through,
And columns of the Parthenon
Were white against each
Schoolhouse wall.
Comment
The message of change is underscored by watching the children. One minute they are at their parents' side, and the
next, they are gone. This may have been felt acutely by Carson as her daughter Cynthia was now away in Emporia,
Kansas at college.
Carson suggests that school teachers once spoke only about the ancient Greeks, but in the modern world, Greece is a member
of the world - Greece too has neighbors.
Pictures of the Parthenon were hung on the classroom wall. These words probably served to introduce the Greek dance scene.