“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 doree
    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.

ALGOL.

* * * * *

THE GREAT INVESTMENT.

I am a fair man, even to Huns.  When Germany pays an indemnity of L2,000,000,000 I think we might knock off a tenner or so because the KAISER has done so much to beautify our banks.  Once they were cold cheerless places.  A suspicion of an overdraft always swept through them.  Now I love to go to the bank and see the beautiful blonde and brown and auburn heads bent over the ledgers.  If I could be quite certain that they were not looking up the details of my account I should be perfectly happy.