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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon. The son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, he was probably educated at the King Edward IV Grammar School in Stratford, where...
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FURTHER READING
Poems About Graduation
Dreams
by Langston Hughes
First Gestures
by Julia Spicher Kasdorf
My Heart Leaps Up
by William Wordsworth
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
The Writer
by Richard Wilbur
Back to School Poems
Apples
by Grace Schulman
Art Class
by James Galvin
Being Jewish in a Small Town
by Lyn Lifshin
Evening Walk as the School Year Starts
by Sydney Lea
First Gestures
by Julia Spicher Kasdorf
From "One A.M."
by David Young
In Michael Robins’s class minus one
by Bob Hicok
Mary's Lamb
by Sarah Josepha Hale
Messieur Degas Teaches Art and Science at Durfy Intermediate School, Detroit 1942
by Philip Levine
Niggerlips
by Martín Espada
Panty Raid
by Terri Ford
Pledge
by Elizabeth Powell
Sentimental Education
by Mary Ruefle
Sick
by Shel Silverstein
The Hand
by Mary Ruefle
The Junior High School Band Concert
by David Wagoner
The Shout
by Simon Armitage
The Testing-Tree
by Stanley Kunitz
Theme for English B
by Langston Hughes
We Real Cool
by Gwendolyn Brooks
Why Latin Should Still Be Taught in High School
by Christopher Bursk
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All the World's a Stage  
by William Shakespeare

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
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