Inspiration Friday: A Poem by One of the Great Masters

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
           This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
           But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

-        

                                - Shakespeare, Sonnet 64

Ruins of tower at Kuskuam palace covered by vegetation

And now a bit of a ramble…

Although most people who have taken English classes know (or at least know of) Shakespeare’ssonnet 18 and 116, I firmly believe that most students do not want to study the Bard’s work (or even bother to read it) because they have been told that ‘it is too difficult’ (Not to mention ‘so not cool’ to like it).

I am very thankful for a mother who loved Shakespeare, told my sister and me the stories, and recited parts of the plays and sonnets. We both also received the Wordsworth edition of Shakespeare’s complete works (the grandest books I owned at that time; three hardback volumes in a slipcase). This was also a time when I really started to realise that most of what I was reading was considered ‘too difficult’ for my age (about 13) by some teachers and other adults. Classics like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Dickens, or Roald Dahl’s short stories and even The Neverending Story.

My point is not ‘give children a pile of thick books to read’ – although that is not really a bad thing. My point is children (or even teenagers) should not be told that something is ‘too difficult for them’ without even letting them try. Not to place that mental block there before they’ve had a chance to decide for themselves. Some books are not age appropriate, yes. But to base ‘too difficult for them to read’ simply on a book that looks ‘too thick’ or one containing words you have to look up in a dictionary is completely silly. 

Bennie Boekwurm