The New School

by Joyce Kilmer

　　

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The New School was published in Kilmer's collection, Main Street and Other Poems (1917).

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HE halls that were loud with the merry tread of young and careless feet ⁠Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday, And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street ⁠Or rises to shake the ivied walls and frighten the doves away. The dust is on book and on empty desk, and the tennis-racquet and balls ⁠Lie still in their lonely locker and wait for a game that is never played, And over the study and lecture-room and the river and meadow falls ⁠A stern peace, a strange peace, a peace that War has made. For many a youthful shoulder now is gay with an epaulet, ⁠And the hand that was deft with a cricket-bat is defter with a sword, And some of the lads will laugh to-day where the trench is red and wet, ⁠And some will win on the bloody field the accolade of the Lord. They have taken their youth and mirth away from the study and playing-ground ⁠To a new school in an alien land beneath an alien sky; Out in the smoke and roar of the fight their lessons and games are found, ⁠And they who were learning how to live are learning how to die. And after the golden day has come and the war is at an end, ⁠A slab of bronze on the chapel wall will tell of the noble dead. And every name on that radiant list will be the name of a friend, ⁠A name that shall through the centuries in grateful prayers be said. And there will be ghosts in the old school, brave ghosts with laughing eyes, ⁠On the field with a ghostly cricket-bat, by the stream with a ghostly rod; They will touch the hearts of the living with a flame that sanctifies, ⁠A flame that they took with strong young hands from the altar-fires of God.

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For more poetry and short stories about the Great War, visit our collection of World War I Literature.

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