Lyra Frivola | Page 3

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