The poem describes impoverished children in a grim 1930s slum schoolroom. Their faces show signs of deprivation and neglect, cut off from the world. The classroom windows represent the limits of their narrow world. The maps and pictures on the walls offer a world they will never experience unless their education opens their minds beyond the confines of the slum and introduces them to nature, literature, and a broader world.

1. 1. Far far from gusty waves, the children’s faces.
2. Like rootless weeds, the hair torn around their pallor.
These children were cut off from the hustle and
bustle of life – the rest of the poem makes clear
how cut off from the world these children are.
There is something wrong with each child
making them social misfits and later on it states
that the school windows were the confines of
their world and that they live (metaphorically) in
crammed holes. – METAPHOR.
British term for primary school.
A city area of poor living conditions
and old buildings in despair.
Windy/ blowing in
sudden strong
rushes.
The children were social misfits. Their
faces were lost-looking and deprived.
The children were deprived – as is
shown by the boy with rickets – and
they were certainly social misfits cut off
from the world.
Simile.
The poem is made up of largely non-sentences, in
other words, sentences with no main verb. It is the
written equivalent of flashing still images on a
screen, one after the other. It has a shock effect:
your mind has no sooner registered one image than
the next presents itself.
It is as if pulled away from their faces, to let
their faces peer through the unkempt hair. PALLOR: i) There is little sunshine in
England.
ii) The narrow, dirty streets in England’s
slums don’t let in light and are unhealthy.
iii) The children were undernourished and
unhealthy.
In 1930’s living in slum was an appalling experience because of very poor buildings, narrow streets and bad hygiene. During 1930
Depression there was huge unemployment. So, despite government feeding schemes, people were near starvation and children in
particular suffered from food deficiency diseases.
SIMILE: Their hair = compared to weeds. The
common ground is that neither is looked after
or rooted in its place. The faces of under-
nourished students are compared to weeds
without roots.

2. 3. The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper-
4. seeming boy, with rat’s eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir
5. of twisted bones, reciting a father’s gnarled disease,
Compound adjective.
Rat’s eyes are furtive,
frightened eyes, and so this
poor boy was probably abused
at home.
Someone who
inherits something.
Prevented from growing
fully.
Literally: speaking out loud
something learnt.
Twisted.
Probably rickets, a children’s disease
caused by lack of Vitamin D provided
by sunshine and good nutrition. (It
makes the bones become soft and
bent, and is common among poor and
disadvantaged people.

3. 6. his lesson from the desk. At back of the dim class
7. one unnoted, sweet and young. His eyes live a dream
8. of squirrel’s game, in tree room, other than this.
This one boy seems to have aspirations
and hopes and ideals beyond the “lack” of
“dreams” around him. He seems to be
inventing fantasies of his own that speak
of a different, more pleasant world.
Is the boy speaking what he was supposed
to learn?
OR
Does this phrase describe the “disease”? Is it
the boy’s lesson from his father’s “desk”?
Dark.
Antithesis with “rat’s eyes”
in line 4.
Is he pretending he is hiding
away in a hole in a tree?

4. 9. On sour cream walls, donations, Shakespeare’s head,
10. cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities.
11. Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map
12. awarding the world its world. And yet, for these
Unpleasant.
Gifts – maybe
someone’s cast-offs. 3 Donations: are a
mockery in this place
and for these children.
From a developed
social system /
having smooth
social manners.
Round shape (in this
case the top of a head).
Has travelled extensively /
experienced the delights of the world.
Tyrol is a region in
Europe.

5. 13. children, these windows, not this world, are world,
14. where all their future’s painted with fog,
15. a narrow street sealed in with a lead sky,
16. far far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.
The world offered on the maps and pictures on the wall have nothing to do with these children.
The grimy windows of the classroom represent the limits of their world: this is all they know.
Everything they know beyond these windows is blurred by fog and hemmed in by a grey sky.
Dense, think mist.
A piece of land with water on 3
sides / a small peninsula.

6. 17. Surely Shakespeare is wicked, the map a bad example
18. with ships and sun and love tempting them to steal –
19. for lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes
20. from fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children
21. wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel
22. with mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.
23. All of their time and space are foggy slum
24. so blot their maps with slums as big as doom.
The pompous image of Shakespeare and the pictures and maps on the wall offer the children a world they will never have or even be able to
aspire to. The mislead them into thinking such a good world can be stolen from those that have it.
Persuading, inviting or making
someone do something wrong.
Literal and
figurative.
With wicked
cleverness, secretly. Coal dump.
Make ugly marks on
paper.
Destruction / a
terrible fate.

7. 25. Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor,
26. this map becomes their window and these windows
27. that shut upon their lives like catacombs,
28. break O break open till they break the town
29. and show the children to green fields, and make their
world
30. run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues
31. run naked into books, the white and green leaves open
32. history theirs who language is the sun.
Member of school
governing body.
Underground cemeteries.
Sky blue.
Move freely, unhindered
by anything.
He suggests that a different way of teaching them would be to take them out of this environment of deprivation – take them,
for example, to open fields / to the seaside – also give them the right kind of literacy experience, to open their minds & world.