Lyra Frivola | Page 2

tenement,?When the Christmas bills begin?Daily, hourly pouring in,?When you pay your gas and poor rate,?Tip the rector, fee the curate,?Let this thought your spirit cheer--?Christmas comes but once a year.
When the man who brings the coal?Claims his customary dole:?When the postman rings and knocks?For his usual Christmas-box:?When you're dunned by half the town?With demands for half-a-crown,--?Think, although they cost you dear,?Christmas comes but once a year.
When you roam from shop to shop,?Seeking, till you nearly drop,?Christmas cards and small donations?For the maw of your relations,?Questing vainly 'mid the heap?For a thing that's nice, and cheap:?Think, and check the rising tear,?Christmas comes but once a year.
Though for three successive days?Business quits her usual ways,?Though the milkman's voice be dumb,?Though the paper doesn't come;?Though you want tobacco, but?Find that all the shops 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When Autumn's winds denude the grove,?I seek my Lecture, where it lurks?'Mid the unpublished portion of?My works,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 manuscript.
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!"
RUB��IYY��T 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 Videantur at the Close?Makes it to all Intents and Purposes?As good as anything of Cicero's.
VI
Yet let it not your anxious Mind perturb?Should Grammar's Law your Diction fail to curb:?Be comforted: it is like Tacitus:?Tis mostly done by leaving out the Verb.
VII
Mark well the Point: and thus your Answer fit?That you thereto all Reference omit,?But argue still about it and about?Of This, and That, and T'Other--not of It.
VIII
Say, why should You upon your proper Hook?Dilate on Things which whoso cares to look?Will find, in Libraries or otherwhere,?Already stated in a printed Book?
IX
Keep clear of Facts: the Fool who deals in those?A Mucker he inevitably goes:?The dusty Don who looks your Paper o'er?He knows about it all--or thinks he knows.
X
A Pipe, a Teapot, and a Pencil blue,?A Crib, perchance a Lexicon--and You?Beside him singing in a Wilderness?Of Suppositions palpably untrue--
XI
'Tis all he needs: he is content with these:?Not Facts he wants, but soft Hypotheses?Which none need take the Pains to verify:?This is the Way that Men obtain Degrees!
XII
'Twixt Right and Wrong the Difference is dim:?'Tis settled by the Moderator's Whim:?Perchance the Delta on your Paper marked?Means that his Lunch has disagreed with him:
XIII
Perchance the Issue lies in Fortune's Lap:?For if the Names be shaken in a Cap?(As some aver) then Truth and Fallacy?No longer signify a single Rap.
XIV
Nay! till the Hour for pouring out the Cup?Of Tea post-prandial calls you home to sup,?And from the dark Invigilator's Chair?The mild Muezzin whispers "Time is Up"--
XV
The Moving Finger writes: then, having writ,?The Product of your Scholarship and Wit?Deposit in the proper Pigeonhole--?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