Research Paper on:
Poems 'Sir Patrick Spens' and 'Schoolsville'

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
The stories are different, the styles are different, and the times during which both of these works were written are different. There are also differences between the poets: Billy Collins  seems to be discussing the American school system. And while we dont know who wrote "Sir Patrick Spens," its very clear that it was created by a Scotsman, about Scotsmen,  and given the language and the storyline, it was a poem written during the 17th or 18th century. Despite the differences, however, both poems do have their similarities. The purpose  of this paper is to compare Schoolsville and Sir Patrick Spens. Although both poems were written centuries apart, both have many things in common.  "Schoolsville" is written from the perspective of a schoolteacher who oversees goings-on in the main school what one could assume is a small town. Even while he oversees  the running of the town, he muses that he has taught enough students to "populate a small town . . ." The entire poem, in fact, ties the theme of  school to a small town, noting that in the town, "the population ages but never graduates." He compares chalk dust to snow dust, and discussing "nights as dark as a  blackboard." The town, then, is basically little more than a school, but a school with grown-ups rather than kid students. Collins compares  school with a small town, noting that there is the same sense of isolationism, the same sense of living in a fishbowl or an ivory tower that both attending school  and living in a small town have in common. The school seems to be a metaphor for the empty lives of human beings, while the town seems to be a