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The Village Schoolmaster Goldsmith
This is not really a whole poem but an extract from Goldsmith's long poem The Deserted Village, which runs to 430 lines. In the opening line of the complete poem, Goldsmith names the village as "sweet Auburn" - but the original on which it is modelled was, according to the poet's sister, Lissoy, in County Westmeath, Ireland.
This passage is a portrait of a teacher at the village school. The poet is looking back on a time when the village was lively and active whereas now no one lives there. (Goldsmith's readers knew this as a reality - changes in land ownership, coupled with new job opportunities in machine production, had caused people to move from the country to the cities, leaving many villages without people.)
In doing so, Goldsmith represents the past as a kind of golden age - a better, kinder and happier time, certainly. Here he expresses admiration for the village teacher. He lists his personal qualities and gives details of the master's learning. But above all he shows how the schoolmaster belonged in his place - having the affection and respect of the whole community.
The poem in detail • Goldsmith identifies the site of the school, in the way he might point it out to a visitor, as beside a fence ("straggling" perhaps, because no-one maintains it now). "Noisy mansion" is partly ironic - the school building would be modest, not really a "mansion" (a luxurious house) except to the teacher and scholars, who would be used to tiny cottages or hovels.
The teacher is outwardly strict, and the scholars learn to respond to his moods (some things do not change much). But he is really kind. Among his accomplishments are literacy ("he could write") and numeracy ("and cipher"). He could measure distances on charts, calculate dates and forecast tides. People believe that he can "gauge" (survey land or estimate its area) - but we do not know if the belief is justified. Most impressive, the village parson recognized his ability to argue.
The less educated country people were full of wonder that "one small head could carry" so much. To the reader, his learning will seem quite limited, but also not especially academic, as we would now call it. Much of what the teacher knows or is rumoured to know is of immediate practical usefulness - like working out dates, tides and land areas.
The poet's method • The form of this poem is in a long sequence of the kind that we call discursive - it moves from one mini-subject to another, in a carefully-organized whole.
The other feature is a very delicate irony. Goldsmith is sincere in his admiration, and he does think that the teacher is a good and worthy man. But he reveals that this object of the villagers' wonder was really quite limited in his achievements. The villagers think it marvellous that he can write and count, for example - but this tells us more about them than about him.
The great importance of the parson as a judge of ability appears, too. (If the parson says it, then it must be true.) Most revealing is the way that the schoolmaster impressed people in argument - by using "words of learned length and thundering sound". (This could almost be a criticism of poetic diction, too.) That is, he did not win by logic or reason, but through using words that baffled the hearer
There are still people who find this impressive, but nowadays we are often unconvinced by those who hide a weak argument behind impressive-sounding words. Moreover, the fact that most of the village people seem to remain ignorant rustics may mean that the schoolmaster has never succeeded in passing on much of his learning to the scholars.
We also note the formal use of contrast - one pair of lines beginning "Full well" shows how the scholars would know when to laugh (even pretending to find his jokes funny), while the next pair shows how they knew when he was in a more severe mood.
