ps are shut:
Bravely still your sorrows bear--
Christmas comes but once a year.

When mince-pies you can't digest
Join with waits to break your rest:
When, oh when, to crown your woe,
Persons who might better know
Think it needful that you should
Don a gay convivial mood;--
Bear with fortitude and patience
These afflicting dispensations:
Man was born to suffer here:
Christmas comes but once a year.

AD LECTIONEM SUAM

When Autumn's winds denude the grove,
I seek my Lecture, where it lurks
'Mid the unpublished portion of
My works,

And ponder, while its sheets I scan,
How many years away have slipt
Since first I penned that ancient man-
uscript.

I know thee well--nor can mistake
The old accustomed pencil stroke
Denoting where I mostly make
A joke,--

Or where coy brackets signify
Those echoes faint of classic wit
Which, if a lady's present, I
Omit.

Though Truth enlarge her widening range,
And Knowledge be with time increased,
While thou, my Lecture! dost not change
The least,

But fixed immutable amidst
The advent of a newer lore,
Maintainest calmly what thou didst
Before:

Though still malignity avows
That unsuccessful candidates
To thee ascribe their frequent ploughs
In Greats--

Once more for intellectual food
Thou'lt serve: an added phrase or two
Will make thee really just as good
As new:

And listening crowds, that throng the spot,
Will still as usual complain
That "Here's the old familiar rot
Again!"

RUBAIYYAT OF MODERATIONS

I

Wake! for the Nightingale upon the Bough
Has sung of Moderations: ay, and now
Pales in the Firmament above the Schools
The Constellation of the boding Plough.

II

I too in distant Ages long ago
To him that ploughed me gave a Quid or so:
It was a Fraud: it was not good enough;
Ne'er for my Quid had I my Quid pro Quo.

III

Yet--for the Man who pays his painful Pence
Some Laws may frame from dark Experience:
Still from the Wells of harsh Adversity
May Wisdom draw the Pail of Common Sense--

IV

Take these few Rules, which--carefully rehearsed--
Will land the User safely in a First,
Second, or Third, or Gulf: and after all
There's nothing lower than a Plough at worst.

V

Plain is the Trick of doing Latin Prose,
An Esse Videan