Once more for intellectual food
    Thou’lt serve:  an added phrase or two
  Will make thee really just as good
    As new: 

  And listening crowds, that throng the spot,
    Will still as usual complain
  That “Here’s the old familiar rot
    Again!”

RUBAIYYAT OF MODERATIONS

  I

  Wake! for the Nightingale upon the Bough
  Has sung of Moderations:  ay, and now
    Pales in the Firmament above the Schools
  The Constellation of the boding Plough.

  II

  I too in distant Ages long ago
  To him that ploughed me gave a Quid or so: 
    It was a Fraud:  it was not good enough;
  Ne’er for my Quid had I my Quid pro Quo.

  III

  Yet—­for the Man who pays his painful Pence
  Some Laws may frame from dark Experience: 
    Still from the Wells of harsh Adversity
  May Wisdom draw the Pail of Common Sense—­

  IV

  Take these few Rules, which—­carefully rehearsed—­
  Will land the User safely in a First,
    Second, or Third, or Gulf:  and after all
  There’s nothing lower than a Plough at worst.

  V

  Plain is the Trick of doing Latin Prose,
  An Esse Videantur at the Close
    Makes it to all Intents and Purposes
  As good as anything of Cicero’s.

  VI

  Yet let it not your anxious Mind perturb
  Should Grammar’s Law your Diction fail to curb: 
    Be comforted:  it is like Tacitus: 
  Tis mostly done by leaving out the Verb.

  VII

  Mark well the Point:  and thus your Answer fit
  That you thereto all Reference omit,
    But argue still about it and about
  Of This, and That, and T’Other—­not of It.

  VIII

  Say, why should You upon your proper Hook
  Dilate on Things which whoso cares to look
    Will find, in Libraries or otherwhere,
  Already stated in a printed Book?

  IX

  Keep clear of Facts:  the Fool who deals in those
  A Mucker he inevitably goes: 
    The dusty Don who looks your Paper o’er
  He knows about it all—­or thinks he knows.

  X

  A Pipe, a Teapot, and a Pencil blue,
  A Crib, perchance a Lexicon—­and You
    Beside him singing in a Wilderness
  Of Suppositions palpably untrue—­

  XI

  ’Tis all he needs:  he is content with these: 
  Not Facts he wants, but soft Hypotheses
    Which none need take the Pains to verify: 
  This is the Way that Men obtain Degrees!

  XII

  ’Twixt Right and Wrong the Difference is dim: 
  ’Tis settled by the Moderator’s Whim: 
    Perchance the Delta on your Paper marked
  Means that his Lunch has disagreed with him: 

  XIII

  Perchance the Issue lies in Fortune’s Lap: 
  For if the Names be shaken in a Cap
    (As some aver) then Truth and Fallacy
  No longer signify a single Rap.