UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS

A rumour and rumbling volcanic

Is heard in the Radical Press,

And Presidents tremble in panic

And Wardens their terrors confess:

How each with anxiety shivers,

The Dean with his fines and his gates,

The ruffian who ragged me in Divvers,

The pedant who ploughed me in Greats!

The doctrines degrading they taught, and

The Progress they nipped in the bud:

The things that they did when they oughtn’ t

And failed to perform when they should:

The Questions prevented from burning,

The Movements forbidden to move,

Recoil on their centres of learning,

Their Parks and the System thereof!

Afar will Democracy chase it,

That gang of impenitent Dons

Who drowned the occasional Placet

By bawling their truculent Nons:

No idle and opulent College

Will feed that obstructionist clique,

Those scoffers at Practical Knowledge

Who vote for compulsory Greek.

And now when the Party of Labour,

Asserting its virtuous sway,

Annexes the wealth of its neighbour

In Labour’ s traditional way,—

When purged of its various abuses

By Birrell’ s beneficent rule,

This haunt of the obsolete Muses

Is changed to a charity school,—

When Fellows and bloated Professors

Their stipends are forced to disgorge,

( Obeying the fiat of Messrs.

Keir Hardie and Burns and Lloyd George )

Deprived by the wrath of the Nation

Of all their unmerited aids,

Perhaps to escape from starvation

They’ ll take to respectable trades!

O wholly delectable vision!

I view with excusable glee

The fate of the shallow precisian

Who failed to appreciate Me;—

I fancy I see myself tossing

With blandly contemptuous mien

A penny for sweeping a crossing

To him who was formerly Dean!