The Rime of the Troubl'd Student
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| An illustration by Gustave Doré for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" |
A parody written for my high school literary magazine.
It is a troubl’d student,
Weighed down by heavy bag,
Whose sullen form and pallid face
‘Neath some great woe do sag.
His gait is slow, his back far arched;
He marches forth to war.
Eyes red as blood, sweat dripping down,
He nears a building’s door.
He pauses at a campus’s gate,
A question for to ask:
“By my many years and sleepless nights,
Whate’er today shall pass?”
The building’s doors are opened wide;
Soon classes shall begin,
The clocks are set, none else do fret—
All hear the busy din.
He holds the door with trembling hand,
“There is a test”, quoth he.
“Hold off! I shall ne’er enter here,”
And swift his hand dropped he.
The gods, they hear and scoff upon
His moaning elegy,
For fate is fate, and fate decreed,
The gods heed not his plea.
He walks through door with wondering eye,
The student ponders still,
And babbles like a three year’s child:
“My test score shall be nil.”
Sev’n thousand cursed steps he climbs,
Sev’n levels up the school,
And at the mountain’s peak cries out,
“I shan’t be made a fool!”
The student sits down in his desk:
He cannot help but fear;
And moaned aloud that worried soul,
That troubl’d test taker.
The test, ‘tis placed upon his desk,
Pale as the page is he,
And to the Xeroxed sheet he asked,
“Now wherefore cursed thou me?”
He looked upon the fearful clock
And drew his eye away;
He looked upon the fearful test,
And there the numbers lay.
He closed his eyes and kept them closed,
‘Twas answers that he sought;
The cold sweat melted from his limbs,
For answers he knew nought.
The student woed, he beats his breast,
Yet cannot help but fear,
And thus spake out that troubl’d soul,
That worried test taker:
“The numbers here, the numbers there,
The numbers all around!
They add, subtract, graph, and divide,
The problems, they abound!”
And in his mind confusion reigned,
And nary a word he wrote;
He sat as if a sculpted scholar
Upon a sculpted seat.
At length did come the hour of one,
The test’s end did come near:
As if’t had been the student’s death,
He cursed it in his fear:
“Questions, questions everywhere,
And how the time doth shrink;
Questions, questions everywhere,
Nor any time to think!”
There passed a weary time. Each test
Was passed and handed in.
A weary time! A weary time!
The student spake again:
“I looked to clock, and tried to think,
But ne’er a mem’ry gushed,
For a wicked fear me overcame;
My mind, ‘twas dry as dust.
“Farewell, farewell! But this I tell
To thee, thou cursed test!
I shall take thee again next term,
‘Till then I shall not rest.”
The ruined student, whose test is done,
Whose hair with fear is hoar
Is gone; and now he marches home,
Turned from the building’s door.
He went like one that hath been stunn’d,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser student
He rose the morrow morn.