C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Wilfrid Blair (1889–1968)
Poems of the Great War: A Ballad of Deathless Dons
The Terrier sniffs on bridges and cliffs, wherever a foe might sneeze,
K’s keen recruit is learning to shoot, the Boy Scout scouteth still,—
And after them all, the dons, the dons!—the agèd dons do drill!
They know, they know how well things go on the Merton fields of France;
But the S. C. R.’s must be fields of Mars—they dare leave nought to chance;
“Louvain!” is the word, and their souls are stirred; for they think of their matchless tuns,
And the ground shall be dusted ere Oxford’s crusted port shall be broached by Huns.
And turn to the left for right incline.
Forgot, forgot are their divers lores
In the patriot stress of forming fours.
Their mortar-boards are a hive for bees
(Which they often were) as they stand at ease.
Though every morn they are wisdom’s fount
In matters which nowadays hardly count,
Each afternoon each neophyte
Gets totally mixed between left and right
(And a don at maths, and a logic don
Turn each to each and are pounced upon).
At the terrible voice of the tu—the sergeant
Their gills go gules and their locks more argent.
And still as the breath comes short, and the knees
Wobble in places, and many a wheeze
Is torn from the depth of complaining tums,
Down the weak line the whisper comes:
“Memento Louvain!”—or “Rheims, μεμνη θσε!”
“Oxford!” they cry, “shall beer-swillers fleece thee?”
And still—though their breath comes yet more short—
They drill like mad to preserve her port.
His brow with sudor dank,
His gown unpipeclayed in his loyal hurry,
Private Professor G
Hear, oh, hear,
With almost swooning ear,
The sergeant (Chiron in disguise),
With how sarcastic drawl he
Damneth the eyes
Of Private Prof. Eng. Lit. S
See yet again
With uncontrollèd pleasure
There, marking time amain
As with such feet as make a lyric measure,
Like Æschylus upon the Marathon day,—
Next to that nice ex-proctor,—
Private and Poet Laureate D
B
And see—but let your eyes with pride be dim!—
Him who professes Art and Archæology
Standing as rear-rank man to him
Of Anthropology.
(Well knows the latter how to dodge,
That bullets in no deadly place may lodge!)—
Him of Eng. Law behold,
Not overbold
To reason why when sergeants bid him charge:
Him of Greek History, him of Geography,
All very fine and large,
This, swift to seize advantage of topography,
That, to announce how ne’er a corps did train
So well since Sparta went upon the wane.
And there be others:
A publisher and sundry heads of houses,
Spurred by North Oxford spouses,
Bidden go forth by yet more agèd mothers;
And, standing desperately at attention
(But looking forward to their tea and scones),
Innumerable dons
And parsons beyond mention.
Which shoot nohow—but they’ve learnt by now to depend on the end that stuns.
And all the rules of the Final Schools combine in a splendid spur,
When the Pyrrhic phalanx does right-about-turn and the order is “As you were!”
Oh, K’s recruit is learning to shoot, the Boy Scout scouteth still,—
But after them all, the dons, the dons!—the deathless dons do drill!
“Louvain!” is the word, and their souls are stirred; for they think of their matchless tuns,
And the ground shall be dusted ere Oxford’s crusted port shall be broached by Huns!