Green Bays | Page 9

not confined to children.
By the late W. W. (of H.M. Inland Revenue Service).
And is it so? Can Folly stalk
And aim her unrespecting darts
In
shades where grave Professors walk
And Bachelors of Arts?
I have a boy, not six years old,
A sprite of birth and lineage high:

His birth I did myself behold,
His caste is in his eye.
And oh! his limbs are full of grace,
His boyish beauty past compare:

His mother's joy to wash his face,
And mine to brush his hair!
One morn we strolled on our short walk,
With four goloshes on our
shoes,
And held the customary talk
That parents love to use.
(And oft I turn it into verse,
And write it down upon a page,
Which,
being sold, supplies my purse
And ministers to age.)
So as we paced the curving High,
To view the sights of Oxford town

We raised our feet (like Nelly Bly),
And then we put them down.

'Now, little Edward, answer me'--
I said, and clutched him by the
gown--
'At Cambridge would you rather be,
Or here in Oxford town?'
My boy replied with tiny frown
(He'd been a year at Cavendish),

'I'd rather dwell in Oxford town,
If I could have my wish.'
'Now, little Edward, say why so;
My little Edward, tell me why.'

'Well, really, Pa, I hardly know.'
'Remarkable!' said I:
'For Cambridge has her "King's Parade,"
And much the more
becoming gown;
Why should you slight her so,' I said,
'Compared
with Oxford town?'
At this my boy hung down his head,
While sterner grew the parent's
eye;
And six-and-thirty times I said,
'Come, Edward, tell me why?'
For I loved Cambridge (where they deal--
How strange!--in butter by
the yard);
And so, with every third appeal,
I hit him rather hard.
Twelve times I struck, as may be seen
(For three times twelve is
thirty-six),
When in a shop the Magazine
His tearful sight did fix.
He saw it plain, it made him smile,
And thus to me he made reply:--

'At Oxford there's a Crocodile;[1]
And that's the reason why.'

Oh, Mr. Editor! my heart
For deeper lore would seldom yearn,

Could I believe the hundredth part
Of what from you I learn.
[1] Certain obscure paragraphs relating to a crocodile, kept at the
Museum, had been perplexing the readers of the Oxford Magazine for
some time past, and had been distorted into an allegory of portentous
meaning.
UNITY PUT QUARTERLY[1].
By A. C. S.
The Centuries kiss and commingle,
Cling, clasp, and are knit in a
chain;
No cycle but scorns to be single,
No two but demur to be
twain,
'Till the land of the lute and the love-tale
Be bride of the
boreal breast,
And the dawn with the darkness shall dovetail,
The
East with the West.
The desire of the grey for the dun nights
Is that of the dun for the grey;

The tales of the Thousand and One Nights
Touch lips with 'The
Times' of to-day.--
Come, chasten the cheap with the classic;

Choose, Churton, thy chair and thy class,
Mix, melt in the must that is
Massic
The beer that is Bass!
Omnipotent age of the Aorist!
Infinitely freely exact!--
As the
fragrance of fiction is fairest
If frayed in the furnace of fact--

Though nine be the Muses in number
There is hope if the handbook
be one,--
Dispelling the planets that cumber
The path of the sun.
Though crimson thy hands and thy hood be
With the blood of a

brother betrayed,
O Would-be-Professor of Would-be,
We call thee
to bless and to aid.
Transmuted would travel with Er, see
The Land
of the Rolling of Logs,
Charmed, chained to thy side, as to Circe
The Ithacan hogs.
O bourne of the black and the godly!
O land where the good niggers
go.
With the books that are borrowed of Bodley,
Old moons and
our castaway clo'!
There, there, till the roses be ripened
Rebuke us,
revile, and review,
Then take thee thine annual stipend
So long over-due.
[1] Suggested by an Article in the Quarterly Review, enforcing the
unity of literature ancient and modern, and the necessity of providing a
new School of Literature in Oxford.
FIRE!
By Sir W. S.
Written on the occasion of the visit of the United Fire Brigades to
Oxford, 1887.
I.
St. Giles's street is fair and wide,
St. Giles's street is long;
But long or wide, may naught abide
Therein of guile or wrong;
For through St. Giles's, to and fro,
The
mild ecclesiastics go
From prime to evensong.
It were a fearsome task, perdie!
To sin in
such good company.
II.

Long had the slanting beam of day
Proclaimed the Thirtieth of May

Ere now, erect, its fiery heat
Illumined all that hallowed street,

And breathing benediction on
Thy serried battlements, St. John,

Suffused at once with equal glow
The cluster'd Archipelago,
The
Art Professor's studio
And Mr. Greenwood's shop,
Thy building, Pusey, where below
The
stout Salvation soldiers blow
The cornet till they drop;
Thine, Balliol, where we move, and oh!
Thine, Randolph, where we stop.
III.
But what is this that frights the air,
And wakes the curate from his lair
In Pusey's cool retreat,
To leave the feast, to