Schoolchildren

by W.H. Auden

Here are all the captivities; the cells are as real:
but these are unlike the prisoners we know
who are outraged or pining or wittily resigned
or just wish all away.

For they dissent so little, so nearly content
with the dumb play of dogs, the licking and rushing;
the bars of love are so strong, their conspiracies
weak like the vows of drunkards.

Indeed, the strangeness is difficult to watch:
the condemned see only the fallacious angels of a vision,
so little effort lies behind their smiling,
the beast of vocation is afraid.

But watch them, set against our size and timing
their almost neuter, their slightly awkward perfection;
for the sex is there, the broken bootlace is broken:
the professor's dream is not true.

Yet the tyranny is so easy. The improper word
scribbled upon a fountain, is that all the rebellion?
A storm of tears shed in a corner, are these
the seeds of the new life?