And thank your Stars that there's an End of it!

LINES TO AN OLD FRIEND

  When we're daily called to arms by continual alarms,
    And the journalist unceasingly dilates
  On the agitating fact that we're soon to be attacked
    By the Germans, or the Russians, or the States:
  When the papers all are swelling with a patriotic rage,
    And are hurling a defiance or a threat,
  Then I cool my martial ardour with the pacifying page
    Of the Oxford University Gazette.

  When I hanker for a statement that is practical and dry
    (Being sated with sensation in excess,
  With the vespertinal rumour and the matutinal lie
    Which adorn the lucubrations of the Press),
  Then I turn me to the columns where there's nothing to attract,
    Or the interest to waken and to whet,
  And I revel in a banquet of unmitigated fact
    In the Oxford University Gazette.

  When the Laureate obedient to an editor's decree
    Puts his verses in the columns of the Times;
  When the endless minor poet in an endless minor key
    Gives the public his unnecessary rhymes,
  When you're weary of the poems which they constantly compose,
    And endeavour their existence to forget,
  You may seek and find repose in the satisfying prose
    Of the Oxford University Gazette.

  In that soporific journal you may stupefy the mind
    With the influence narcotic which it draws
  From the Latest Information about Scholarships Combined
    Or the contemplated changes in a clause:
  Place me somewhere that is far from the Standard and the Star,
    From the fever and the literary fret,—
  And the harassed spirit's balm be the academic calm
    Of the Oxford University Gazette!

THE PARADISE OF LECTURERS

  When you might be a name for the world to acclaim,
      and when Opulence dawns on the view,
  Why slave like a Turk at Collegiate work
      for a wholly inadequate screw?
  Why grind at the trade—insufficiently paid—of
      instructing for Mods and for Greats,
  When fortunes immense are diurnally made
      by a lecturing tour in the States?

  Do you know that in scores they will pay at the doors—these
      millions in darkness who grope—
  For a glimpse of Mark Twain or a word from Hall Caine
      or a reading from Anthony Hope?
  We are ignorant here of the glorious career
      which conspicuous talent awaits:
  Not a master of style but is making his pile
      by the lectures he gives in the States!

  With amazement I hear of the chances they
      lose—of the simply incredible sums
  Which a Barrie might have (if he did not refuse)
      for reciting A Window in Thrums:
  Of the prospects of gain which are offered
      in vain as a sop to the Laureate's pride:
  Of the price which I learn Mr Bradshaw
      might earn by declaiming his excellent Guide.

  Columbia! desist from soliciting those who
      your bribes and petitions contemn:
  Though plutocrats scorn the rewards you
      propose, there are others superior to them:
  Why burden the proud with superfluous
      pelf, who wealth in abundance possess,
  When indigent Worth (I allude to myself)
      would go for substantially less?

  For Europe, I know, to oblivion may doom
      the fruits of my talented brain,
  But they're perfectly sure of creating a boom
      in the wilds of Kentucky and Maine:
  They'll appreciate there my illustrious work
      on the way to make Pindar to scan,
  And Culture will hum in the State of New York
      when I read it my essay on 'An! [1]

  I've a scheme, which is this:—I will start
      for the West as a Limited Lecturing Co.,
  And the public invite in the same to invest
      to the tune of a million or so:
  They will all be recouped for initial expense
      by receiving their share of the "gates,"
  Which I venture to think will be truly
      immense when I lecture on Prose in the States.

  Thus Merit will not be permitted to rot—as
      it does—on Obscurity's shelf:
  Thus the national hoard shall with profit be
      stored (with a trifle of course for myself):
  For lectures are dear in that fortunate
      sphere, and are paid for at fabulous rates,—
  All the gold of Klondike isn't anything like
      to the sums that are made in the States!

[1. Transcriber's note: In the original book, the two characters preceding the exclamation mark are the Greek "Alpha" and "nu". They appear to be preceded by the Greek rough-breathing diacritical, making the three characters together rhyme with "Maine", two lines earlier.]

A DIALOGUE ON ETHICS

  Said the Isis to the Cherwell in a tone of indignation,
    "With a blush of conscious virtue your enormities I see:
  And I wish that a reversal of the laws of gravitation
    Would prevent your vicious current from contaminating me!
  With your hedonists who grovel on a cushion with a novel
    (Which is sure to sap the morals and the intellect to stunt),
  And the spectacle nefarious of your idle, gay Lotharios
    Who pursue a mild flirtation in a misdirected punt!"

  Said the Cherwell to the Isis, "You may talk about my vices—
    But of all the sights of sorrow since the universe began,
  Just commend me to the patience that can bear the degradations
    Which inflicted are by Rowing on the dignity of man:
  The unspeakable reproaches which are lavished by your coaches—
    On my sense of what is proper they continually jar"—
  ("It is simply Mos Majorum—'twas their fathers' way before 'em—
    'Tis a kind of ancient Cussed 'em"—said the Isis to the Cher.)

  "Are we men and are we Britons? shall we ne'er obtain a quittance"—
    Said the Cherwell to the Isis—"from the tyrants of the oar?
  O it's Youth in a Canader with the willow boughs to shade her
    And a chaperone discreetly in attendance (on the shore),
  O it's cultivated leisure that is life's supremest treasure,
    Far from athletes merely brutal, and from Philistines afar:
  I've a natural aversion to gratuitous exertion,
    And I'm prone to mild flirtation," said the unrepentant Cher.

  But in accents of the sternest, "Life is Real: Life is Earnest,"
    (Said the grim rebuking Isis to his tributary stream);
  "Don't you know the Joy of Living is in honourably Striving,
    Don't you know the Chase of Pleasure is a vain delusive Dream?
  When they toil and when they shiver in the tempests on the River,
    When they're faint and spent and weary, and they have
          to pull it through,
  'Tis in Action stern and zealous that they truly find a