MIRACULOUS, perennial, flashing stream
Of talent such as never was or shall be!
The Head — the advertising manager! —
Imposing in black silk, resounds and booms
Through the great hall the tale of routine “honours,”
Matrics., Higher Certificates, Scholarships,
Prelims, in This and That — so far the present,
Incomparable enough till he compares
The records of the past, the late alumni
Whom only three years’ absence has made myths.
And they, it seems, the implacable Old Guard,
Still carry all before them — steel on steel
They clash through massed battalions of exams.,
Invincible! Fifteen within the year
Have taken B.A.’s in Classics, English, Maths.,
In Natural Sciences and Engineering,
At young and ancient universities.
Nay! one before the Royal Society
Has read a paper; three submitted theses
For D.Sc., B.Litt., and B.C.L.
In hallowed Oxford …
A hundred parents’ hearts with tearful pride
Swell as they hear — that they have been so blest
With sons they love but cannot understand.
Now tea is done and all have gone away —
Precocious eloquents with stacks of prizes —
“Ludorum Victor,” lowest in his form,
Contented to be centre of the smiles
Of all the sisters — small ambitious boys
Who swot at prep, beyond the midnight hour,
Pushed by their parents and drawn on by hope.
So moves the slow machine, sifting and grading,
Year after year, till lawyers, pedagogues,
Chemists and metallurgists crowd the earth
And the old school feels it has done good work —
Seven prizes! What a head that youth has got! —
Square in the brow and long from eye to ear —
And how he talks! — swift, flippant, gay and wise
As a late April wind — He rounds the bend
Making a concertina with his books,
And now is gone. So now to you I speak —
Precocious eloquent with your seven prizes!
I, too, in my last year secured no less —
Forgive my mentioning it! I mention it
For your good, not for mine. It adds a weight
More than my words to this comparison.
I envy, pity, love your just elation.
But I have now attained the second youth
Of proud, fierce, challenging, sombre twenty-eight!
And I must warn you. Now life seems to spread
A broad highway before you, bearing you
In flaming chariot with four gold wheels —
Your solid scholarships, I saw the list —
To some old dreaming university.
Life now has height and depth, but not yet breadth.
Flushed with success, you hail the approaching close
Of this your last term with a wild relief.
You think you have thrown off the tyranny
Of peevish middle-age for evermore.
Not yet, you think, need you select careers,
Nor yet prepare for Smiles’ and Avebury’s
“Battle of Life” — but rest upon your oars,
Pensive, grateful to life, perhaps in love,
But always witty, wise, chivalrous, eloquent,
Perhaps quixotic, even? And this first summer
Of unchecked liberty you’ll fritter away,
Revelling in sun and sea on hill and shore,
Till your Greek accents grow a trifle shaky
And you forget your Roman history —
But still — you feel — there still is time to muse,
To feed your general interests — fatal hire!
A narrow expertise will pay you better! —
To dabble in Italian, music, art,
To read the “middles” in the weekly press,
Play tennis, talk, philosophise and dream —
Yes! I must warn you! For within four years
You must needs make a fatal choice for life.
Perhaps the Church? — where you will find belief
Drowned in theology and love in creeds.
Perhaps the rich hypocrisy of the law?
A rising barrister, you’ll argue cases
You don’t believe for clients you despise,
Bully poor fools who never had a chance,
Toady to rich contractors, marry well,
Enter the House, the County, and Debrett.
Reviewer to some weekly rag? — You’ll sit
Firm on the fence. You’ll never say “This rot …”
“This pompous resonance …” “Hogwash for the Mob”
… But, tongue in cheek, and honesty in purse,
To each equivocal judgment add a phrase
Removable from context … “Bold technique” …
“Robust and rapid movement” … “Subtle and rare
Power of evocation.” Publishers’ puffs,
As you intend, will quote them, till they sell
Seventy times seventy … and you “make a name.”
Or as a leading journalist you’ll write
Rubbish for women, schoolboy politics
For men, and in your leisure hours you’ll work
For editors who cannot keep their tempers
Or publishers who cannot keep accounts —
Or if you fail to please the proper clique
Of pseudocritics — when you’re sixty-eight
You’ll be compelled to grind out slipshod books
On “Mysteries of Royal Courts” and “Loves
Of Paris Salons,” or edit dictionaries,
While those who crabbed your reputation die
With honour and are buried in St. Paul’s.
A popular novelist? — with tongue in cheek
You’ll play on the emotions of the mass
Betraying Art to earn your thirty shekels.
A politician? — you’ll defend abuses,
Oppressions, exploitations, which you know
Destroy the race but keep one class alive,
Until you win a K.C.B., and dying,
Become immortal to the Primrose League.
Or you will burn your brain in rousing men
To universal justice, freedom, love —
Until you find that rich nor poor desire
Cold culture but a comfortable life.
A schoolmaster? — the young barbarians
Year in, year out, go surging through your room
While you grow dictatorial and dull,
Learning no more because you know it all.
A university lecturer? — poorly paid,
Losing originality in research,
Embracing platitudes and tendencies
Because they save your salary and your time.
Perhaps a “brilliant surgeon”? You’ll remove
Fetid appendices from “nouveaux riches”
Or practise rhinoplasty on young dukes.
Between your sumptuous flat in Harley Street,
Your Georgian mansion on the Surrey Hills,
And your stone lodge in Perthshire you will speed
In a Rolls-Royce. You may choose any of these.
You will “go far,” you will “succeed,” of course,
Precocious eloquent with your seven prizes.
But oh! while yet there still is time, be warned!
There’s but two fates, whatever you may do —
Contemptibly engrossed or nobly bored!
So while there still is time, preserve your free,
Swift, lucid, fresh, eager and brilliant mind,
Your personality, while there is time!
Throw down your books and run away to sea,
Ramble the Andes, journey to the Poles,
Ransack the seven seas, ere you be caught
By all these bonds. Better to live unknown,
And still have time to think and feel, than grow
Dogmatic, dull, successful, adipose!
