PREFACE

St. Andrews, but for its Town Council and its School Board, is a quiet place; and the University, except during the progress of a Rectorial Election, is peaceable and well-conducted.  I hope these verses may so far reflect St. Andrews life as to be found pleasant, if not over exciting.

I am able to reprint the verses on ‘The City of Golf’ by the special courtesy of the Editor of the Saturday Review.

A few explanatory notes are given at the end of the book.

R. F. Murray.

 The voice that sings

The voice that sings across the night
   Of long forgotten days and things,
Is there an ear to hear aright
   The voice that sings?

It is as when a curfew rings
   Melodious in the dying light,
A sound that flies on pulsing wings.

And faded eyes that once were bright
   Brim over, as to life it brings
The echo of a dead delight,
   The voice that sings.

 The best pipe

In vain you fervently extol,
   In vain you puff, your cutty clay. 
A twelvemonth smoked and black as coal,
   ’Tis redolent of rank decay
And bones of monks long passed away—­
   A fragrance I do not admire;
And so I hold my nose and say,
   Give me a finely seasoned briar.

Macleod, whose judgment on the whole
   Is faultless, has been led astray
To nurse a high-born meerschaum bowl,
   For which he sweetly had to pay. 
Ah, let him nurse it as he may,
   Before the colour mounts much higher,
The grate shall be its fate one day. 
   Give me a finely seasoned briar.

 The heathen Turk of Istamboul,
   In oriental turban gay,
Delights his unbelieving soul
   With hookahs, bubbling in a way
To fill a Christian with dismay
   And wake the old Crusading fire. 
May no such pipe be mine, I pray;
   Give me a finely seasoned briar.

Clay, meerschaum, hookah, what are they
   That I should view them with desire? 
Both now, and when my hair is grey,
   Give me a finely seasoned briar.

 Hymn of Hippolytus to Artemis

Artemis! thou fairest
Of the maids that be
In divine Olympus,
Hail!  Hail to thee! 
To thee I bring this woven weed
Culled for thee from a virgin mead,
Where neither shepherd claims his flocks to feed
Nor ever yet the mower’s scythe hath come. 
There in the Spring the wild bee hath his home,
Lightly passing to and fro
Where the virgin flowers grow;
And there the watchful Purity doth go
Moistening with dew-drops all the ground below,
Drawn from a river untaintedly flowing,
 They who have gained by a kind fate’s bestowing
Pure hearts, untaught by philosophy’s care,
May gather the flowers in the mead that are blowing,
But the tainted in spirit may never be there.