The Village Schoolmaster by Oliver Goldsmith


Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer. He was born in 1772. He died in 1774. He was a poet, dramatist and a novelist.. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin. His most famous novel is The Vicar of Wakefield and his most famous play is She Stoops to Conquer. The present poem is an extract from a very long poem The Deserted Village. 


This poem is a simple picture of a village school master. The school was in a small village at Lissoy, an Irish village where the poet himself had studied. Mr. Thomas Paddy Byrne was the village school master. As the poet himself was a pupil of this school master, he is able to create a true atmosphere to the poem.


The poet remembers a school in his village. The school was situated next to an irregular fence. Tiny little flowers blossomed near it. In the school, a schoolmaster taught. His school was so small. 

In fact, he was the only teacher in the school ,and so he ruled the school like a king.  He was an expert teacher and scholarly person. He was a man of discipline. He loved rules. He was strict to look. The poet knew him very well, like every truant. 


The trembling pupils in the school could read the master's face and guess his moods. But the master was a jolly person too. He had a storehouse of jokes. His pupils found all his jokes boring and uninteresting. Yet they laughed  at all jokes with counterfeit glee. If the master came to school in a bad mood, the news would spread like a wildfire.  Despite this, the master was a kind man. His only fault was his passion for learning. 


The entire village knew the master was a scholarly person. He could write and solve mathematical problems. He could measure lands. He knew the boundaries of territories and was also capable of predicting the dates of festivals. He could calculate complex things. 


The only person who was equal to the master in the village was the village parson. Often they argued with each other and the master never stopped arguing even when he was defeated. He kept using bombastic words and learned words. All the villagers were awestruck how such a tiny head of the master could store such vast knowledge. When the village was deserted, the school was also deserted. But today his fame has become a part of the past. The very spot he triumphed has been forgotten. 





 

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