Do you have any idea what this poem means? and do you recognize the symbols?

Question

The students drowsed and drowned
in the teacher's ponderous monotone
Limp bodies looping in the wordy heat
Melted and run together, desks and flesh as one
swooning and swimming in a sea of drone.
Each one asleep, swayed and vaguely drifted
With lidding eyes and lolling, weighted heads
Was caught on heavy waves and dimly lifted,
Sunk slowly, ears ringing, in the syrup of his sound,
Or borne from the room on a heaving wilderness of bed.
And then, on a sudden, a bird’s cool voice
Punched out song. Crisp and spare
On the startled air,
Break-beamed
Or idly tossed,
Each note gleamed
Like a bead of frost.
A bird’s cool voice from a neighbor tree
With five clear calls- mere grains of sound
Rare and neat
Repeated twice
But they sprang the heat
Like drops of ice.
Ears ******, before the comment ran
Fading and chuckling where a wattle stirred,
The students wondered how they could have heard
Such dreary monotones from a man,
Such wisdom from a bird.

Answer 1

I take it you're in a poetry class...
Obviously, there is a class of students sitting in an overly hot classroom. The class is listening to the most boring lecture perhaps they've experienced in their entire being - or maybe this lethargic reaction is learned because every lesson is this inspiring. The minds of every one in the class have shut down, they're not taking in anything. Its as if they have become furniture in the classroom (desk and flesh become one). Out of nowhere, a bird's song, so starkly different from the atmosphere (the poem says its a cool voice vs the hot class) in the classroom startles them all. The simple notes have refreshed the class. In that moment, they realize that true education, true wisdom, cannot only come from man (in this case, the teacher's wisom...if indeed he has any...cannot be passed on to the students). Rather, it can be obtained from seemingly the most unlikely sources.

Answer 2

The sweet melody of a bird's song is more pleasing than the rambling words of a man, speaking in a monotone of boring rhetoric.
Also may pertain to the written word.

Read some of it on this board.

Answer 3

The poem is about kids in school when it is very hot. Is this an assignment from a class? There are instances of personification, alliteration, metaphors and similes. I just might have to copy this poem!

Answer 4

Sounds like students zoning out in school, fading from the heat and get relief from the school bell (bird).

Answer 5

That was my American History class in Junior High School.

Answer 6

um? the kids are bored and lifeless and the bird is all joyful so birds are better than people? that's just a guess...