I never knew a scholar who
Could more at ease converse on
The latest _Classical Review_
Than that superior person.

He spoke of books--all manly sports
He deemed but meet for scoffing:
He did not know the Racquet Courts--
He'd never heard of golfing--
Professors ne'er were half so wise,
Nor Readers more sedate!
He was--I learnt with some surprise--
An undergraduate.

Another man I met, whose head
Was crammed with pastime's annals,
And who, to judge from what he said,
Must simply live in flannels:
A shallow mind his talk proclaimed,
And showed of culture no trace:
One "book" and one alone he named--
His own--'twas on the Boat-race.

"Of course," you cry, "some brainless lad,
Some scion of ancient Tories,
Bob Acres, sent to Oxford _ad
Emolliendos mores_,
Meant but to drain the festive glass
And win the athlete's pewter!"
There you are wrong: this person was
That undergraduate's Tutor.

* * * *

Twas but a dream, I said above,
In concrete truth deficient,
Belonging to the region of
The wholly Unconditioned:
Yet, when I see how strange the ways
Of undergrad. and Don are,
Methinks it was, in classic phrase,
Not _upar_ less than _onar_. [1]

[1. Transcriber's note: the words "upar" and "onar" were transliterated
from the Greek as follows: "upar"--upsilon (possibly with the
rough-breathing diacritical), pi, alpha, and rho; "onar"--omicron
(possibly with the rough-breathing diacritical), nu, alpha, and rho.]

THE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE

I gazed with wild prophetic eye
Into the future vast and dim:
I saw the University
Indulge its last and strangest whim:
It did away with Mods and Greats,
Its other Schools abolished all:
And simply made its candidates
Read Science Agricultural.

They learnt to hoe: they learnt to plough:
To delve and dig was all their joy:
But O in ways we know not now
Those candidates we did employ:
No more, accepting of a bribe
To take these persons off our hands,
We sent them off, a studious tribe,
To distant climes and foreign lands.

We did not then examine in
The subjects which we could not teach
To those who Honours aimed to win
We taught their subjects, all and each
We made the Professoriate
Take from its Professorial shelf
Authorities of ancient date,
And teach