Oh, Jeez, not poetry again

A Used Textbook
2007 09

Thirty years ago
My mother recommended to me
An old anthology
Of poetry: A.J.M. Smith's
Seven Centuries of Verse.

Being poor, I bought a used copy,
And it was full
Of the worst struggling notes
In someone's hand
Trying to understand
Yeats and Hopkins
On a public school education.

"Poet is split into two
This separates him from animal part"
Whatever this meant
To some poor sod
Copying down blindly the phrase
Of a bored TA in Humanities
Nothing does it impart
Of the first two lines
Of Sailing to Byzantium.

And apparently
There was nothing to be said
(no notes appear)
Of Byzantium's first two lines
That end, "The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed."