Behold! I am not one that goes to Lectures…
Behold! I am not one that goes to Lectures or the pow-wow of
Professors.
The elementary laws never apologise: neither do I apologise.
I find letters from the Dean dropt on my table—and every one is
signed by the Dean's name—
And I leave them where they are; for I know that as long as I
stay up
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
I am one who goes to the river,
I sit in the boat and think of 'life' and of 'time.'
How life is much, but time is more; and the beginning is
everything,
But the end is something.
I loll in the Parks, I go to the wicket, I swipe.
I see twenty-two young men from Foster's watching me, and the
trousers of the twenty-two young men,
I see the Balliol men en masse watching me.—The Hottentot
that loves his mother, the untutored Bedowee, the Cave-man
that wears only his certificate of baptism, and the shaggy
Sioux that hangs his testamur with his scalps.
I see the Don who ploughed me in Rudiments watching me: and the
wife of the Don who ploughed me in Rudiments watching me.
I see the rapport of the wicket-keeper and umpire. I cannot see
that I am out.
Oh! you Umpires!
I am not one who greatly cares for experience, soap, bull-dogs,
cautions, majorities, or a graduated Income-Tax,
The certainty of space, punctuation, sexes, institutions,
copiousness, degrees, committees, delicatesse, or the
fetters of rhyme—
For none of these do I care: but least for the fetters of rhyme.
Myself only I sing. Me Imperturbe! Me Prononce!
Me progressive and the depth of me progressive,
And the bathos, Anglice bathos
Of me chanting to the Public the song of Simple Enumeration.
poem by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
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