The Lay of the Best T-shirts

Breathes there the teacher with a soul so dead
Who never to him/herself hath said,
This is my own, my special shirt!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him/herself burned
As to the last Friday the calendar hath turned
After a month wandering, undistinguished and hurt?

If such there breathe, go, mark them well;
For them no rhetorical raptures swell;
High though their grades, proud their sneers,
Over fragment-free essays that perhaps deserve cheers,
They may compose, but they do not live,
If what they have, they do not give.

These are not Rangers as we've come to know 'em,
These are not the folks who honor a poem.
The dollar must on Dawn's desk be laid;
The debt cannot go unanswered, unhonored, unpaid.

On First Hearing
of Marla's Honor

Much have I travell'd  on the campus of GC,
And many goodly folk and projects seen;
Up also to High Tech have I been
Which tecchies in thrall to computers hold.
Oft, of one special web page had I been told
That good-hearted Marla ruled as her demesne;
Yet never did I appreciate her skill;
Till I heard Paul Pair speak out loud and bold:
Then, I felt like some venture capitalist
When a new dotcom bursts onto the NASDAQ;
Or like the sturdy students, when, with baffled eyes
They stare at our Ranger shirts — and all of us
Thinking of Marla and her prize —
Are silent, as we lay our dollars down.