In the poem ‘The School Boy’, the first stanza portrays the experience of the schoolboy outside the school, whereas the next three stanzas present the experience of the schoolboy inside the school.

In the first stanza, the speaker is a young boy who tells the reader that he feels joyful to rise in the fresh and delightful summer morning. He enjoys the chirping of the birds which announces the daybreak. The boy gets entertained by the company of the hunter who blows his horn from a distant field and the sweet lullabies of skylarks. Thus, the imagé of the child in the first stanza focuses on nature as free and unfettered. He is associated with the spring as a time for growth, freshness and playfulness. But, in the next three stanzas; we get a totally different picture of the young schoolboy.

Once the boy is inside the school, he loses his feeling of paradise. In the school, the birds sing no longer and the atmosphere is no longer pure or innocent. The boy is supervised by a cruel teacher and the young ones spend the day In sighing and dismay. The boy finds the school boring. He sits drooping in class. He claims that school hours are too long. He can’t find any interest in books. He describes the learning in school as a long ‘dreary shower’.

In the next stanza, the boy says that inside the school he feels like a caged bird that is forced to sing, and when he feels annoyed, he cannot but droop his tender wings. Thus, the bird imagery allows for the comparison between the schoolboy outside the school and the schoolboy inside the school.