On Looking Through an Old Punishment Book
at Eurunderee School
On Looking Through an Old Punishment Book - context Summary
Childhood Remembered at Eurunderee
This short, ironic poem has Lawson revisiting an old school punishment book at Eurunderee and discovering his name is absent. The speaker reacts with surprise and self-mockery, imagining he must have been a "model boy"—and therefore a little sneak—while feeling a brief, comic nostalgia for youth. The ending balances wistful longing to reclaim boyhood with a rueful claim that adulthood has compensated for those restrained schooldays.
Read Complete AnalysesI took the book of punishment, And ran its columns down; I started with an open brow And ended with a frown; I noted long-forgotten names – They took me unaware; I noted old familiar names. But my names wasn’t there! I thought of what I might have been, And Oh! My heart was pained To find, of all the scholars there, That I was never caned! I thought of wasted childhood hours, And a tear rolled down my cheek – I must have been a model boy, Which means a little sneak! Oh, give me back my youth again! Doc Faustus used to say – I only wish the Powers could give My boyhood for a day, A model boy! Beloved of girls! Despised by boys and men! But it comforts me to think that I’ve Made up for it since then.
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