Lyra Frivola | Page 6

Theory alone
Did learning train the student mind--
Its
exercise was carried on
In places properly assigned:
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 grassy 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 Fashion'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 fashions bring thee back,
My Chimneypot, farewell!
THE 1713 AGAINST NEWNHAM
[This Fragment will be found to contain, in a concentrated form, all the
constituent 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 Principal 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 Hellespont
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