Explore "The Cairn" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When I think of the little children learning / In all the schools of the world, / Learning in Danish, learning in Japanese / That two and two are four, and where the rivers of the world
Rise, and the names of the mountains and the principal cities, / My heart breaks.
Come up, children! Toss your little stones gaily / On the great cairn of Knowledge!
(Where lies what Euclid knew, a little grey stone, / What Plato, what Pascal, what Galileo: / Little grey stones, little grey stones on a cairn.)
Tell me, what is the name of the highest mountain?
Name me a crater of fire! a peak of snow!
Name me the mountains on the moon!
But the name of the mountain that you climb all day, / Ask not your teacher that.