houghts on the Christmas Vacation,

with Smalls in view.

WIFT November term is dying,
Ice floats on my pot of grog;

So misty 'tis, a magnifying

Glass could barely pierce the fog.
Cooks are busy stowing geese in
Pantry-cupboards full of mince;
School-boys now their skates are greasing,
While their smiles their joy evince.

All come home to laugh, carouse, and
Eat plum pudding and roast beef,
I alone must bear a thousand

Sources of eternal grief:

Must not think which maid is fairest,
She in dark, or she in blue,
But con first and second aorist,

With their paradigmas too.

THOUGHTS ON CHRISTMAS VACATION.

Must for Smalls (I'm sure to mull it!)
Cram, like geese and such fat kind,
Which now seem, so full their gullet,
Apoplecticly inclined.

But like them, though only loading
Brain and mind to little use,

Won't those horrid dons, I'm boding,
Quickly cook my precious goose?

I dare not go to evening parties,
Nor wander 'neath the mistletoe;
Just the spots where'er my heart is,
I these places must forego.
And that Smith, so swell at skating
(While I'm stewing, wretched elf),
Will be drawing lovely Kate in
His new sledge, all by himself.

I who used to read her Tasso,
Sitting by her 'neath the shade,
Or at evening sung the basso
While she the piano played,
Now one glance or two in toto
Will be all to me assigned,
Not e'en having got her photo.,
Just to look at during "grind."

333

34

THOUGHTS ON CHRISTMAS VACATION.

They say that gladly we should all learn

Every Latin author gone;

Climb Parnassus, as up Malvern,
Eager for sweet Helicon.

Rank nonsense this at very best is,

Horace openly I hate,

Hecuba detest, Alcestis
Piously abominate.

Oh! would I were a copper Indian,
Chewing 'baccy in a grove;
Though perhaps I should be skinn'd and
Tomahawk'd by some dark cove.

Better this than the existence

Than the life I leading am,
Seeing looming in the distance

That detestable Exam.

WORCESTER COLL.

C. E. W. B.

To Silence.

ILENCE, thou art as the insatiate sea,

Which myriad spoils hath locked within his deep; Navies, before whose march did tempests flee,

Beneath his unbetraying bosom sleep :

Or as that other sea, which hath no waves,
Whose ripples quiver everlastingly,

Within whose bottomless chasm lost stars find graves,
Great Night's blue ocean, unstained, unbillowy.
As beaven drinks stars, as sails are gorged of seas,
So over song thine ancient lips are clenched:

But

say,

wilt thou restore those harmonies

Thy robberies heaped since Chaos until now?

:

Yea though stars vanish, yet they be not quenched; Sea shall give up his dead,—and so shalt thou.

OXFORD.

0.

Song of the Young.

ནདད

E'RE standing gazing on the world
Eager for strife and battle,

Around us float the shouts of war,

Its turmoil and its rattle;
We heed not what our elders say:
We think it idle prattle.

We're longing for life's waves to rise,
And rising to receive us;

We think that we are strong for fight,

But no one will believe us.

We wait awhile: when waiting's o'er

Will action undeceive us?