Waxing eloquent

​I teach a high school language arts class on-line and today I graded the literary analysis papers for The Virginian by Owen Wister. The students did an excellent job choosing themes and supporting their thesis statements with examples. I intensely added comments about past and present tense and proper use of quotes among other things. By the time I sent back their papers, I'd marked up a lot of things. So, today in class I waxed eloquent (I've always wanted to use that phrase) about the privilege of having one teacher for five students and how the revision process is a great learning experience. After my lengthy and inspiring speech, one of the students asked, "So, you want us to correct the papers and turn them back in?" Yeah, that 's what I meant.