THE END OF APRIL

This is the time when larks are singing loud

And higher still ascending and more high,

This is the time when many a fleecy cloud

Runs lamb-like on the pastures of the sky,

This is the time when most I love to lie

Stretched on the links, now listening to the sea,

Now looking at the train that dawdles by;

But James is going in for his degree.

James is my brother. He has twice been ploughed,

Yet he intends to have another shy,

Hoping to pass ( as he says ) in a crowd.

Sanguine is James, but not so sanguine I.

If you demand my reason, I reply:

Because he reads no Greek without a key

And spells Thucydides c-i-d-y;

Yet James is going in for his degree.

No doubt, if the authorities allowed

The taking in of Bohns, he might defy

The stiffest paper that has ever cowed

A timid candidate and made him fly.

Without such aids, he all as well may try

To cultivate the people of Dundee,

Or lead the camel through the needle's eye;

Yet James is going in for his degree.

Vain are the efforts hapless mortals ply

To climb of knowledge the forbidden tree;

Yet still about its roots they strive and cry,

And James is going in for his degree.