irtuous sway,
Annexes the wealth of its neighbour
In Labour's traditional way,--
When purged of its various abuses
By Birrell's beneficent rule,
This haunt of the obsolete Muses
Is changed to a charity school,--

When Fellows and bloated Professors
Their stipends are forced to disgorge,
(Obeying the fiat of Messrs.
Keir Hardie and Burns and Lloyd George)
Deprived by the wrath of the Nation
Of all their unmerited aids,
Perhaps to escape from starvation
They'll take to respectable trades!

O wholly delectable vision!
I view with excusable glee
The fate of the shallow precisian
Who failed to appreciate Me;--
I fancy I see myself tossing
With blandly contemptuous mien
A penny for sweeping a crossing
To him who was formerly Dean!

DIPLOMAS IN ARCHITECTURE AT CAMBRIDGE

("Education differs from technical training."--Expert opinion in a letter
to the _Times_.)

Not in vain with quaint devices
Infants of the age of four
Build their mimic edifices
All upon the nursery floor;
Neither is the presage missed
By the Educationist,
When he doth the fact recall
How that Balbus built a wall!

Thus I mused on such-like theses,
While my errant fancy swam
Through the circumambient breezes
To the silver streams of Cam,--
There observed with pleased surprise
Ancient Universities
Still in touch at every stage
With the Progress of the Age;

There, released from sloth and coma
(Alma Mater's chief defect),
There they grant a new Diploma
To the budding Architect,
Take the blighted Builder's art
To their academic heart,
Hope it may in time become
Part of their curriculum:

There they tell their College Porters
Not to think it strange or odd
When a load of bricks and mortar's
Dumped within the College quad;
No indignant Tutor hauls
Him who scales the College walls,--
Plying on that airy perch
Architectural Research!

Thus I sang: I seemed to see an
Epoch made, the Future's guide;
But my glad exultant paean
Was not wholly justified:
Men whose names we all revere,
Stars in Architecture's sphere,
Phrases used which don't imply
Any genuine sympathy:

Ch---mpn---ys, Bl---mfield, T. G. J---cks---n,
Hushed my lyre's triumphant string--
Said in limpid A