Robert Gilbert Welsh

THE GAUNT old man

Who teaches Latin and Greek in High School

Is not as old as he looks.

He has a lean ill-fed soul

And has missed the real nourishment of life

Because he has merely nibbled at it,

Canned,

Out of books.

But the Recording Angel

Has inscribed one good deed to his credit.

When Jane Howe was all on edge to go as a missionary to India

Although her orphaned brothers and sisters needed her at home

He got Jane to read queer books—

The Mahabarata and the Zend Avesta—

And they discouraged her

And opened her eyes to the impertinence

Of going to India as a missionary;

They impelled her to stay at home,

Where she helped to bring up the younger children.

After a while she married a good provider,

And has a family of young and savage Americans

Who need her prayers and labors

Much more than the Hindoos.

They say that the teacher of Greek and Latin

Was in love with Jane.

If he was he never breathed it.

He always hid his desires

And crushed them,

And never had the courage

Even to make to himself

The apology he thought they merited.

Sometimes the gaunt old man

Who teaches Latin and Greek in High School

Sits in Weinberg’s Café

On rainy nights;

And in the hazy, half-lighted room,

Through the wavering smoke from many cigars,

He suddenly looms up large

Like a Djinn out of a bottle.