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TEACHERS.NET GAZETTE
Volume 4 Number 8
COVER STORY
New teacher induction . . . what does that have to do with me, a veteran educator?
It Takes a Community
to Induct a Teacher
...
REGULAR FEATURES
Apple Seeds: Inspirational quotes by Barb Erickson
Special Days This Month by Ron Victoria
Featured School
Classroom Photos by Members of the Teachers.Net Community
The Fire of Drift-Wood by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Lighter Side of Teaching
  • Boys to Men
  • Bad News For School Year 2003-2004
  • Georgia's NCLB Head-Tricks
  • Teacher Jokes
  • Schoolies
  • Woodhead
  • Handy Teacher Recipes
    Classroom Crafts
    Help Wanted - Teaching Jobs
    Fun with Food: Hola Jalapeno from the Lesson Bank
    PRINTABLES
  • Birthday Cards
  • Moose Book Cover and Labels
  • Teddy Bear ABC Chant
  • Reading Log
  • Popcorn Words
  • More Popcorn Words
  • Upcoming Ed Conferences
    Letters to the Editor
    TEACHER INSPIRATION
    "Teacher, You Touched My Life" by anonymous
    ON-SITE INSIGHTS
    Making Life Easier in the Classroom from the Teachers.Net Chatboard
    Teaching Positive Attitude Toward Math by Roger Fuller
    August Columns
    August Articles
    August Informational Items
    Gazette Home Delivery:

    Poem
    The Fire of Drift-Wood
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

    We sat within the farm-house old,
    Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
    Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold,
    An easy entrance, night and day.

    Not far away we saw the port,
    The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,
    The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
    The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

    We sat and talked until the night,
    Descending, filled the little room;
    Our faces faded from the sight,
    Our voices only broke the gloom.

    We spake of many a vanished scene,
    Of what we once had thought and said,
    Of what had been, and might have been,
    And who was changed, and who was dead;

    And all that fills the hearts of friends,
    When first they feel, with secret pain,
    Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
    And never can be one again;

    The first slight swerving of the heart,
    That words are powerless to express,
    And leave it still unsaid in part,
    Or say it in too great excess.

    The very tones in which we spake
    Had something strange, I could but mark;
    The leaves of memory seemed to make
    A mournful rustling in the dark.

    Oft died the words upon our lips,
    As suddenly, from out the fire
    Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
    The flames would leap and then expire.

    And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
    We thought of wrecks upon the main,
    Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
    And sent no answer back again.

    The windows, rattling in their frames,
    The ocean, roaring up the beach,
    The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
    All mingled vaguely in our speech;

    Until they made themselves a part
    Of fancies floating through the brain,
    The long-lost ventures of the heart,
    That send no answers back again.

    O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!
    They were indeed too much akin,
    The drift-wood fire without that burned,
    The thoughts that burned and glowed within.

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