Though my scalp is almost hairless,

And my figure grows convex.

Backward moves the kindly dial;

And I'm numbered once again

With those noblest of their species
Called emphatically 'Men':

Loaf, as I have loafed aforetime,

Through the streets, with tranquil mind,

And a long-backed fancy-mongrel

Trailing casually behind:

Past the Senate-house I saunter,

Whistling with an easy grace;

Past the cabbage-stalks that carpet
Still the beefy market-place;

Poising evermore the eye-glass

In the light sarcastic eye,

Lest, by chance, some breezy nursemaid

Pass, without a tribute, by.

Once, an unassuming Freshman,

Through these wilds I wandered on,

Seeing in each house a College,

Under every cap a Don:

Each perambulating infant

Had a magic in its squall,

For my eager eye detected

Senior Wranglers in them all.

By degrees my education

Grew, and I became as others;

Learned to court delirium tremens

By the aid of Bacon Brothers;

Bought me tiny boots of Mortlock,
And colossal prints of Roe;

And ignored the proposition

That both time and money go.

Learned to work the wary dogcart

Artfully through King's Parade;

E

Dress, and steer a boat, and sport with

Amaryllis in the shade:

Struck, at Brown's, the dashing hazard;

Or (more curious sport than that)

Dropped, at Callaby's, the terrier

Down upon the prisoned rat.

I have stood serene on Fenner's

Ground, indifferent to blisters,

While the Buttress of the period
Bowled me his peculiar twisters:

Sung 'We won't go home till morning';
Striven to part my backhair straight;

Drunk (not lavishly) of Miller's

Old dry wines at 78:

When within my veins the blood ran,

And the curls were on my brow,

I did, oh ye undergraduates,

Much as ye are doing now.

BEER.

IN those old days which poets say were golden— (Perhaps they laid the gilding on themselves:

And, if they did, I'm all the more beholden
To those brown dwellers in my dusty shelves,

Who talk to me "in language quaint and olden"
Of gods and demigods and fauns and elves,
Pans with his pipes, and Bacchus with his leopards,
And staid young goddesses who flirt with shepherds :)

In those old days, the Nymph called Etiquette (Appalling thought to dwell on) was not born. They had their May, but no Mayfair as yet,

No fashions varying as the hues of morn.