Lyra Frivola Part 3

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 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 a.s.signed: 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 gra.s.sy 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 Fas.h.i.+on'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 then upon thy native rack As varying modes compel, Till next year's fas.h.i.+ons bring thee back, My Chimneypot, farewell!

THE 1713 AGAINST NEWNHAM

[This Fragment will be found to contain, in a concentrated form, all the const.i.tuent parts of Greek Tragedy. It has an Anagnorisis, because its subject is the Recognition of Women. It also contains _at least one_ Peripeteia: and the action has been strictly confined, chiefly by the Editor of the _Magazine_, within one revolution of the sun.]

SCENE: _Interior of a Ladies' College_

LEADER OF THE CHORUS OF LADIES

Sisters, from far upon my senses steals A sound of crackers and of Catherine wheels, By which I know the Senate in debate Decides our future and the country's fate: And lo! a herald from the city's stir I see arrive--the usual Messenger.

_Enter a Messenger_

_M._ O maiden guardians of this sacred shrine--

_Ch._ Observe the rules: you've had your single line.

_M._ Say, is the Lady Princ.i.p.al at home?

_Ch._ Thou speak'st, as one for information come.

_M._ I ask the question, for I wish to know.

_Ch._ By shrewd conjecture one might guess 'twas so.

_M._ Go, tell your Lady I would speak with her.

_Ch._ About what thing? what quest dost thou prefer?

_M._ I bear a tale I hardly dare to tell.

_Ch._ Why vex her ears, when ours will do as well?

_M._ Hear then the facts which with self-seeing eyes I witnessed, not receiving from another.

For when I came within those doors august Where sat the Boule, doubting if to grant The boon of honour which the women ask, Or not: and like some Thracian h.e.l.lespont Tides of opinion flowed in different ways, Until obeying some divine decree (This is a Nominative Absolute) The hollow-bellied circle of a hat Received their votes (and now, but not till now, Observe my true apodosis begin)-- Arithmetic, supreme of sciences, Proclaimed that persons to the number of One thousand seven hundred and thirteen Voted Non-Placet (or, It does not please), While thrice two hundred, also sixty-two, Voted for Placet on the other side; Who, being worsted, come as suppliants With boughs and fillets and the rest complete, Winging the booted oarage of their feet Within your gates: the obscurantist rout Pursue them here with threats, and swear they'll drag them out!

Such is my tale: its truth should you deny, I simply answer, that you tell a lie.

CHORUS

Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! What shall we do and where shall we go?

Dublin or Durham, Heidelberg, Bonn, All to escape the recalcitrant don?

In what peaceful shade reclined Shall the cultured female mind E'er remunerated be By a Bachelor's Degree?

_Pheu, pheu_! [1] Whence, O whence (here the antistrophe ought to commence), Whence shall we the privilege seek Due to our knowledge of Latin and Greek?

Shall we tear our waving locks?

Shall we rend our Sunday frocks?

No, 'tis plain that nothing can Melt the so-called heart of man.

While with loud triumphant pealings Ring his cries of horrid joy, Let us vent our outraged feelings In a wild _otototoi_-- [2]

Justifiable impatience, when the shafts of fate annoy, Makes one utter exclamations such as _ototototoi_! [2]

_Enter_ PROFESSOR PLACET

I ask you, ye intolerable creatures, Why raise this wholly execrable din, O objects of dislike to the discreet?

Six hundred persons, also sixty-two (Almost the very number of the Beast) Have voted for you, and defend your gates.

Moreover, mark my subtle argument:-- When gates are locked no person can get in Without unlocking them: your gates are locked, And I have got the key: so that, unless I ope the gates, the foe cannot get in.

This statement is Pure Reason: or, if this Is not Pure Reason, _I_ don't know what is.

CHORUS

Holy Reason! sacred _Nous_! [3]

Thou that hast for ever parted From the Cambridge Senate House, Make, O make us valiant hearted!

Wisdom, still residing here, Calm our mind and chase our fear While with wild discordant clamour On our College gate they hammer!