TEMPORA MUTANTUR.

There once was a time when I revelled in
rhyme, with Valentines deluged my cousins,

Translated Tibullus and half of Catullus, and
poems produced by the dozens.

Now my tale is nigh told, for my blood's running
cold, all my laurels lie yellow and faded.

"We have come to the boss;" [1] like a weary old
hoss, poor Pegasus limps, and is jaded.

And yet Mr. Editor, like a stern creditor, duns
me for this or that article,

Though he very well knows that of Verse and of
prose I am stripped to the very last particle.

What shall I write of? What subject indite of?
All my _vis viva_ is failing;

_Emeritus sum_; Mons Parnassus is dumb, and my
prayers to the Nine unavailing.--

Thus in vain have I often attempted to soften
the hard heart of Mr. Arenae;

Like a sop, I must throw him some sort of a
poem, in spite of unwilling Camenae.

* * * * * *

No longer I roam in my Johnian home, no more
in the "wilderness" wander;

And absence we know, for the Poet says so,
makes the heart of the lover grow fonder.

I pine for the Cam, like a runaway lamb that
misses his woolly-backed mother;

I can find no relief for my passionate grief, nor
my groanings disconsolate smother.

Say, how are you all in our old College Hall?
Are the dinners more costly, or plainer?

How are Lecturers, Tutors, Tobacco and Pewters,
and how is my friend, the Complainer?

Are the pupils of Merton, and students of Girton,
increasing in numbers, or fewer?

Are they pretty, or plain? Humble-minded or
vain? Are they paler, or pinker, or bluer?

How's the party of stormers, our so-called
Reformers? Are Moral and Natural Sciences

Improving men's Minds? Who the money now
finds, for Museums, and all their appliances?

Is Philosophy thriving, or sound sense reviving?
Is high-table talk metaphysic?

Will dark blue or light have the best of the
fight, at Putney and Mortlake and Chiswick?

I often importune the favour of Fortune, that no
misadventure may cross us,

And Rhodes once again on the watery plain,
may prove an aquatic Colossus.

[N.B. since I wrote I must add a short note,
by means of new fangled devices,

Our "Three" was unseated, and we were
defeated