the candidates itself

My scanty page could ne'er contain
Of works the long and learned list
By which it was their plan to train
The sucking agriculturist:
In brief, the arts of tilling land
Sufficiently imparted were
By great Professor Ellis, and
By great Professor Bywater.

One taught th' aspiring candidate
In Hesiod each alternate day:
One showed him how the crops rotate
From Cato De Re Rustica:
The bee that in our bonnets lurks
He taught to yield its honied store
By reading Columella's works
And also Virgil (Georgic Four).

Yet not by Theory alone
Did learning train the student mind--
Its exercise was carried on
In places properly assigned:
From toil by weather undeterred
In winter wild or burning June,
The precepts in the morning heard
They practised in the afternoon.

The Colleges, whose grassy plots
Are now resorts of vicious ease,
Were then laid out in little lots,
With useful beans and early peas:
Each merely ornamental sod
They dug with spades and hoed with hoes:
The wilderness in every quad
Was made to blossom as the rose.

The gardens too, with cereals decked,
Where tennis-courts no longer were,
Showed Agriculture's due effect
Upon the student's character:
No more by practices beguiled
Which Virtue with displeasure notes,
No longer dissolute and wild,
He sowed domesticated oats.

It was indeed a blissful state:
For Convocation's high decree
Dubbed the successful candidate
Magister Agriculturae:
And if he failed, his vows denied,
The world observed without surprise
That those who learnt the plough to guide
Were objects of its exercise!

THE LAST STRAW

Now Spring bedecks with nascent green
The meadows near and far,
And Sabbath calm pervades the scene,
And Sabbath punts the Cher.:
While I, like trees new drest by June,
Must bow to Fashion's law,
And wear on Sunday afternoon
A variegated Straw.

My Topper! so serenely sleek,
So beautifully tall,
Wherein I decked me once a week
Whene'er I went to call,--
No more shall now th' admiring maid,
While handing me my tea,
View her reflected charms displayed
(Narcissus-like) in thee!

Yet oh! though different forms of hat
May wreathe my manly brow,
No Straw shall e'er (be sure of that)
Be half so dear as thou.
Hang t