Volume 152 — OXFORD REVISITED.

Last week, a prey to military duty, I turned my lagging footsteps to the West; I have a natural taste for scenic beauty, And all my pent emotions may be guessed To find myself again At Didcot, loathliest junction of the plain. But all things come unto the patient waiter, "Behold!" I cried, "in yon contiguous blue Beetle the antique spires of Alma Mater Almost exactly as they used to do In 1898, When I became an undergraduate. "O joys whereto I went as to a bridal, With Youth's fair aureole clustering on a brow That no amount of culture (herpecidal) Will coax the semblance of a crop from now, Once more I make ye mine; There is a train that leaves at half-past nine. "In a rude land where life among the boys is One long glad round of cards and coffin juice, And any sort of intellectual poise is The constant butt of well-expressed abuse, And it is no disgrace To put a table-knife inside one's face, "I have remembered picnics on the Isis, Bonfires and bumps and BOFFIN'S cakes and tea, Nor ever dreamed a European crisis Would make a British soldier out of me— The mute inglorious kind That push the beastly war on from behind. "But here I am" (I mused) "and quad and cloister Are beckoning to me with the old allure; The lovely world of Youth shall be mine oyster Which I for one-and-ninepence can secure, Reaching on Memory's wing Parnassus' groves and Wisdom's fabled spring." But oh, the facts! How doomed to disillusion The dreams that cheat the mind's responsive eye! Where are the undergrads in gay profusion Whose waistcoats made melodious the High, All the jeunesse dorée That shed the glamour of an elder day? Can this be Oxford? And is that my college That vomits khaki through its sacred gate? Are those the schools where once I aired my knowledge Where nurses pass and ambulances wait? Ah! sick ones, pale of face, I too have suffered tortures in that place! In Tom his quad the Bloods no longer flourish; Balliol is bare of all but mild Hindoos; The stalwart oars that Isis used to nourish Are in the trenches giving Fritz the Blues, And many a stout D.D. Is digging trenches with the V.T.C. Why press the search when every hallowed close is Cluttered with youthful soldiers forming fours; While the drum stutters and the bugler blows his Loud summons, and the hoarse bull-sergeant roars, While almost out of view The thrumming biplane cleaves the astonished blue? It is a sight to stir the pulse of poet, These splendid youths with zeal and courage fired, But as for Private Me, M.A.—why, blow it! The very sight of soldiers makes me tired; Learning—detached, apart— I sought, not War's reverberating art. Yain search! But see! One ancient institution Still doing business at the same old stand; 'Tis Messrs. Barclay's Bank, or I'm a Proossian, That erst dispensed my slender cash-in-hand; I'll borrow of their pelf And buy some War Loan to console myself.