A. D. Godley - Lyra Frivola
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A. D. Godley >> Lyra Frivola
THE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE
I gazed with wild prophetic eye
Into the future vast and dim:
I saw the University
Indulge its last and strangest whim:
It did away with Mods and Greats,
Its other Schools abolished all:
And simply made its candidates
Read Science Agricultural.
They learnt to hoe: they learnt to plough:
To delve and dig was all their joy:
But O in ways we know not now
Those candidates we did employ:
No more, accepting of a bribe
To take these persons off our hands,
We sent them off, a studious tribe,
To distant climes and foreign lands.
We did not then examine in
The subjects which we could not teach
To those who Honours aimed to win
We taught their subjects, all and each
We made the Professoriate
Take from its Professorial shelf
Authorities of ancient date,
And teach the candidates itself
My scanty page could ne'er contain
Of works the long and learned list
By which it was their plan to train
The sucking agriculturist:
In brief, the arts of tilling land
Sufficiently imparted were
By great Professor Ellis, and
By great Professor Bywater.
One taught th' aspiring candidate
In Hesiod each alternate day:
One showed him how the crops rotate
From Cato De Re Rustica:
The bee that in our bonnets lurks
He taught to yield its honied store
By reading Columella's works
And also Virgil (Georgic Four).
Yet not by 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 know what is.
CHORUS
Holy Reason! sacred _Nous_! [3]
Thou that hast for ever parted
From the Cambridge Senate House,
Make, O make us valiant hearted!
Wisdom, still residing here,
Calm our mind and chase our fear
While with wild discordant clamour
On our College gate they hammer!
[_Confused Noise without._]
_Hemich. a._ [4] Horrid things! I really wonder
how they ever dared to come,
When they know to base Non-Placets
that we're always Not At Home.
_Hemich. B._ [4] 'Tis a national dishonour:
'tis the century's disgrace.
_Hemich. a._ If the College rules allowed it,
_I_ should like to scratch their face.
_Hemich. B._ Never mind! a time is coming
when despite of all their Dons
We will sack the hall of Jesus,
and enjoy the wealth of John's!
_Hemich. a._ Vengeance! let us face the foe-man,
boldly bear the battle's brunt,
With our Placets to assist us
and our chaperons in front!
[_Alarums; Excursions--special trains for voters._]
(_A violation of the rule_ "Ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet" _is
about to commence, when--_)
_Enter_ APOLLO
(_With apologies to Dr V-rr-ll for his profligate character._)
When all too deftly poets tie the knot
And can't untwist their complicated plot,
'Tis then that comes by Jove's supreme decrees
The useful _theos apo mechanes_. [5]
Rash youths! forbear ungallantly to vex
Your fellow students of the softer sex!
Ladies! proud leaders of our culture's van,
Crush not too cruelly the reptile Man!
Or by experience you, as now, will learn
Th' eternal maxim's truth, that e'en a worm will turn.
[1. Transcriber's note: The words "Pheu" and "pheu" were transliterated
from the Greek as follows: "Pheu"--Phi, epsilon, upsilon; "pheu"--phi,
epsilon, upsilon.]
[2. Transcriber's note: The words "otototoi" and "ototototoi" were
transliterated from the Greek as follows: the "ot" pairs--omicron (with
the rough-breathing diacritical), tau; the trailing "i"--iota.]
[3. Transcriber's note: The word "Nous" was transliterated from the
Greek as follows: Nu, omicron, upsilon, sigma.]
[4. Transcriber's note: The "a" and "B" following each "Hemich" were
transliterated from the Greek "alpha" and "Beta", respectively.]
[5. Transcriber's note: The phrase "theos apo mechanes" was
transliterated from the Greek as follows: "theos"--theta, epsilon,
omicron, sigma; "apo"--alpha, pi, omicron; "mechanes"--mu, eta, chi,
alpha, nu, eta, sigma.]
QUADRIVIAD, ll. 1-51
Arma virosque cano: procul o, procul este profani:
nescio mentiri: si quis mendacia quaerit
in vespertinis quaerat mendacia chartis.
me neque multo iterum Pharsalia sanguine tincta
nec tam Larissa nuper fugitiva relicta
Graecia percussit, quam Curia Municipalis
Principis augusta dextra Cambrensis aperta,
atque novae longis imbutae litibus aedes:
omnia quae vobis canerem si tempus haberem
aut spatium: sed non habeo, varias ob causas.
nunc civilia bella viaeque cruore rubentes
Musae sufficient et Quadrivialis Enyo.
Nox erat et caeio fulgebat luna sereno
desuper: in terris fulgebat Serica lampas
plurima, et ornatis pendent vexilla fenestris.
spectando gaudent cives: academica pubes
palatur passim plateis aut ordine facto
proruit ignavum cives pecus: omnia late
laetitia magni praesentia Principis implet.
Metropolitanae custos, Robertule, pacis,
tu quoque laetus ades, nec dedignaris amice
inter ridentem comis ridere popellum.
ecce tamen Furiae Martini desuper arce
dant belli signum: ruit undique vulgus ad arma:
procuratores obsistunt subgraduatis,
civibus iratis obsistunt subgraduati
et cives illis: pacis custodibus, omnes.
turba venit diris ultrix accincta bacillis:
Metropolitani vecti per strata caballis
proturbant cunctos, reliquos in carcere claudunt.
Consiliarius en! Urbanus in occiput ipse
percutitur nec scit quisnam cere comminuat brum:
namque negant omnes, et adhuc sub judice lis est.
quid Medicina viris jurisve peritia prodest,
jurisconsultos dubio si jure coercent
vincula, nec proprios arcet Medicina bacillos?
heu pietas, heu prisca fides! neglectus alumnus
Tutorem in vacua tristis desiderat aula:
interea Tutor sub judice municipali
litigat, et jurat nil se fecisse nefandum,
obtestans divos: nec creditur obtestanti.
quid referam versos equites iterumque reversos
subgraduatorum pellentes agmina ferro,
inque pavimentis equitantes undique turmas?
proh pudor! o mores, o tempora! forsitan olim
exercens operam curvo Moderator aratro
inveniet mixtis capitum fragmenta galeris
relliquias pugnae, et mentem mortalia tangent.
me sacer Aegidius Musarum fana colentem
aegide defendit, perque ignea tela, per hostes
incolumem vexitque tuens rursusque revexit.
MUSICAL DEGREES
Too oft there grows a painful thorn the floweret's stalk upon:
Behind each cupboard's gilded doors there lurks a Skeleton:
The crumpled roseleaf mocks repose, beneath the bed of down:
In proof of which attend the tale of Bach Beethoven Brown.
Beethoven Brown could play and sing before he learnt to crawl:
Piano, bones, or ophicleide--he played upon them all!
Some talk of Paderewski, or of Dr Joachim--
These artists meritorious are, but can't compare with him.
No faults or errors technical his Symphonies deface:
He calculates in counterpoint, he thinks in thoroughbass:
Composers of celebrity--musicians of renown--
Confess that they're inferior far to Bach Beethoven Brown.
As conquerors, their triumphs won, new fields before them see,
So Mr Brown resolved to have a Musical Degree:
Some say that it the title was and others say the gown
That captive took the soaring soul of Bach Beethoven Brown.
But ah! our Statues grovelling command their candidates
To satisfy examiners in Smalls, and Mods., and Greats,
To learn those verbs irregular which men of taste abhor,
Before you can a Doctor be or e'en a Bachelor!
O mores! and O tempora! can pedantry compel
Musicians who write choruses to construe them as well?
Is this (I ask) the way to deal with genius great and high?
Why fetter it with Latin Prose? and Echo answers "Why?"
Beethoven Brown is famous still, though ignorant of Greek,
He writes cantatas every month and anthems once a week:
And still in every capital and each provincial town
Piano organs play the tunes of Bach Beethoven Brown;
Earls, Viscounts, Dukes, and R-y-lties his music throng to hear:
Already he's a Baronet, and soon he'll be a Peer:
And--thrice a year this awful news a nation's heart appals,
That great Sir Bach Beethoven Brown is ploughed again in Smalls!
QUIETA MOVERE
"Any leap in the dark is better than standing still."--_New Proverb_.
Talk not to us of the joys of the Present,
Say not what is is undoubtedly best:
Never be ours to be merely quiescent--
Anything, everything rather than rest!
Placid prosperity bores us and vexes:
What if philosophers Latin and Greek
Say that well-being's a Status and _Exis_? [1]
Nothing should please you for more than a week.
Tinkering, doctoring, shifting, deranging,
Urged by a constant satiety on,
Ever the new for the newer exchanging,
Hazarding ever the gains we have won--
Only perpetual flux can delight us,
Blown like a billow by winds of the sea:
Still let us bow to the shrine of St. Vitus--
_Vite Sanctissime, ora pro me_!
Pray, that when leaps in the darkness uncaring
End in a fall (as they probably will),
Mine be the credit for valiantly daring,
Others be charged with defraying the bill!
[1. Transcriber's note: The word "Exis" was transliterated from the
Greek as follows: Epsilon (with the rough-breathing diacritical), xi,
iota, sigma.]
GRAECULUS ESURIENS
There came a Grecian Admiral to pale Britannia's shore--
In Eighteen Ninety-eight he came, and anchored off the Nore;
An ultimatum he despatched (I give the text complete),
Addressing it "_To Kurio_, the Premier, Downing-street." [1]
"Whereas the sons of Liberty with indignation view
The number of dependencies which governed are by you--
With Hellas (Freedom's chosen land) we purpose to unite
Some part of those dependencies--let's say the Isle of Wight."
"The Isle of Wight!" said Parliament, and shuddered at the word,
"Her Majesty's at Osborne, too--of course, the thing's absurd!"
And this response Lord Salisbury eventually gave:
"Such transfers must attended be by difficulties grave."
"My orders," said the Admiral, "are positive and flat:
I am not in the least deterred by obstacles like that:
We're really only acting in the interests of peace:
Expansion is a nation's law--we've aims sublime in Greece."
With that Britannia blazed amain with patriotic flames!
They built a hundred ironclads and launched them in the Thames:
They girded on their fathers' swords, both commoners and peers;
They mobilized an Army Corps, and drilled the Volunteers!
The Labour Party armed itself, invasion's path to bar,
"Truth" and the "Daily Chronicle" proclaimed a Righteous War;
Sir William Harcourt stumped the towns that sacred fire to fan,
And Mr Gladstone every day sent telegrams from Cannes.
But ere they marched to meet the foe and drench the land with gore,
Outspake that Grecian Admiral--from somewhere near the Nore--
And "Ere," he said, "hostilities are ordered to commence,
Just hear a last appeal unto your educated sense:--
"You can't intend," he said, said he, "to turn your Maxims on
The race that fought at Salamis, that bled at Marathon!
You can't propose with brutal force to drive from off your seas
The men of Homer's gifted line--the sons of Socrates!"
Britannia heard the patriot's plea, she checked her murderous plans:
Homer's a name to conjure with, 'mong British artisans:
Her Army too, profoundly moved by arguments like these,
Said 'e'd be blowed afore 'e'd fight the sons of Socrates.
They cast away their fathers' swords, those commoners and peers,--
Demobilized their Army Corps--dismissed their Volunteers:
Soft Sentiment o'erthrew the bars that nations disunite,
And Greece, in Freedom's sacred name, annexed the Isle of Wight.
[1. Transcriber's note: The phrase "To Kurio" was transliterated from
the Greek as follows: "To"--Tau, omega; "Kurio"--Kappa, upsilon, rho,
iota, omega.]
THE ROAD TO RENOWN
If it still is your luck to be left in the ruck,
and of fame you're an impotent seeker,
If you fruitlessly aim at a Senate's acclaim
when you can't catch the eye of the Speaker,
If whenever you rise you observe with surprise
that the House is perceptibly thinner,
And your eloquent pleas are a sign to M.P.'s
that it's nearly the time for their dinner:
Should you sigh for the heights where the eminent lights,
in the region of letters who shine, are;
Should your novels and tales have indifferent sales
and your verses be hopelessly minor,
Should the public refuse your attempts to peruse
when you try to instruct or to shock it,
While it adds to the spoils of its Barries and Doyles,
and increases the hoards of a Crockett:
If you're baffled, in short, by the fame that you court,
and your name's overlooked by the papers,--
There's a road to success without toil or distress,
or nocturnal consumption of tapers:
By adopting this plan you're a prominent man,
and no longer a painful aspirant:
You must come on the scene as a bold Philhellene,
and a foe to the Turk and the Tyrant!
You'll orate to the crowd on the heritage proud
which by Greece is bequeathed to the nations
(You can gain in a week an acquaintance with Greek
by a liberal use of translations),
And the names that you quote with the aid of your "Grote"
and a noble assumption of choler,
Will attest that you feel that excusable zeal
which belongs to an eminent scholar.
You will prate before mobs of Lord Salisbury's jobs
and the villainous schemes of the Kaiser,
Which will make them believe you've a plan up your sleeve
if they'd only take you for adviser;
You may cheerfully speak of assisting the Greek
'gainst the foes that his country environ:
'Tis improbable quite you'll be wanted to fight,
and the phrase will remind them of Byron.
If you can't get a place in Society's race,
and you have to confess that you're beaten,
Yet I hope I have shown you may make yourself known
by espousing the cause of the Cretan:
You will sell all your works by denouncing the Turks,
and the public will hasten to read 'em,
When in reverent tones you are mentioned as "Jones,
the Defender and Champion of Freedom!"
L'AFFAIRE (CHAPTER ONE)
It was a little Bordereau that lay upon the ground:
The Franco-Gallic Government that document it found,
And straightway drew the inference, though how I do not know,
Some Jew had sold to Germany this dreadful Bordereau.
'Tis all (they said) a Hebrew trick---a treasonable plan--
And, now we come to think of it, why Dreyfus is the man!
At any rate (they argued thus), it is for him to show
That he is not the criminal who sold the Bordereau.
Some hinted at another man, whose autograph it bore--
But this was Dreyfus' artifice, and proved his guilt the more:
No motive for the horrid deed confessedly he had:
And crimes which are gratuitous are nearly twice as bad.
They caught that Jew (did Government) and charged him with the sale;
They proved his guilt--or said they did--and shut him up in gaol;
And then, their case to justify and show their verdict true,
They took and baited every one who called himself a Jew.
These incidents an uproar caused like Donnybrook its Fair:
Wherever Frenchmen met to talk 'twas Pandemonium there:
And anywhere except in France you'd argue from events
That Ministers had rather lost the public confidence.
Then spake the German Government (and here I must deplore
The fact that they had not presumed to mention it before):
"Although," they said respectfully, "we would not interfere
With any Angelegenheit outside our proper sphere--
Why make this quite-essentially-unnecessary fuss?
This compromising document was never sold to us:
Potztausend!" said the Chancellor, "upon my honour, no!
We have not got and do not want your precious Bordereau!"
This rather struck the Ministers, in Paris where they sat:
They took and read the Bordereau: they had not yet done that.
'Twas found to mention obvious facts which any one might know--
No horrid revelations lurked within the Bordereau!
And did they set poor Dreyfus free, the due amends to make,
Regain the public confidence by owning their mistake,
And cease for popularity by sordid means to bid?
These are the things they might have done; but this is what they did:--
They said, those Gallic Ministers, "Undoubtedly it's true
The document has not been sold, and is not worth a _sou_;
But as the man's in prison now, why, there he's got to stay--
_Que voulez-vous_?" they simply said, "it is a _Chose Jugee_!"
This artless little narrative is specially designed
To illustrate the workings of the Gallic statesman's mind;
And till they change those processes and mould their ways anew,
It is not yet in Paris that I want to be a Jew.
UNSELFISH DEVOTION
Ye Concerts who plan for the welfare of Man
and compose his occasional quarrels,
Whom we properly deem to be teachers supreme
in the sphere of Political Morals,
May you win the renown that your efforts should crown
and reward your assiduous labours
In arranging the cares and embarrassed affairs
that afflict your unfortunate neighbours!
Should a potentate go for his national foe,
and, as soon as he's thoroughly licked him,
Should he dare to demand a concession of land
from his prostrate and paralyzed victim,
It is then you arise and his arm you arrest
when his harvest is ripe for the reaping,
And a people oppressed may in confidence rest
when it's safe in Diplomacy's keeping.
It is you who protest in a horrified tone
at a hint of Integrity's danger,
And the victor is shown that a Concert alone
is of Law and of Fate the arranger:
With a warlike display of your fleets in array
and of Maxims (both empty and loaded)
You establish it plain that his notions of gain
are immoral and also exploded!
Let the blasphemous cry that it's done with an eye
to your ultimate personal profit,
That your chivalrous task is but worn as a mask
till occasion allows you to doff it,
Let the caviller say that the victim to-day
is preserved from a final disaster,
And is saved from the Japs that to-morrow perhaps
he may furnish a meal for their master:
Yet I cannot believe that what Concerts achieve
is by reasons ulterior dictated,
I am perfectly sure that their motives are pure
(by themselves it is frequently stated);
By themselves we are taught that they never in thought
could the Good with the Selfish commingle--
What they do is designed for the good of mankind
with an eye that is simple and single!
For whomever--_e.g._, let us say the Chinee--
you have freed from the fear of invasion,
Should he presently seem in a posture to be
which is open to Moral Persuasion,--
How you take him in hand, a philanthropist band!
how you toil to improve his condition,
With a noble disdain of the trouble and pain
of a wholly unselfish Partition!