Kitabı oku: «The Casual Ward: Academic and Other Oddments», sayfa 6

FRAGMENT OF A JARGONIAD

 
Arise, my Muse, and ply th’ extended Wing!
It is of Language that I mean to sing.
Thou mighty Medium, potent to convey
The clearest Notions in the darkest Way,
Diffus’d by thee, what Depth of verbal Mist
Veils now the Realist, now th’ Idealist!
Our mental Processes more complex grow
Than those our Sires were privileged to know.
In Ages old, ere Time Instruction brought,
A Thought or Thing was but a Thing or Thought:
Such simple Names are now forever gone —
A Concept this, that a Noümenon:
As Cambria’s Sons their Pride of Race increase
By joining Ap to Evan, Jones, or Rees,
A prouder Halo decks the Sage’s Brow,
Perceptive once, he’s Apperceptive now!
Here sits Mentality (that erst was Mind),
By correlated Entities defin’d:
Here Monads lone Duality express
In bright Immediacy of Consciousness:
O who shall say what Obstacles deter
The Youth who’d fain commence Philosopher!
The painful Public with bewilder’d Brain
For Metaphysic pants, but pants in vain:
Too hard the Names, too weighty far the Load:
Language forbids, and Br-dl-y blocks the Road.
From Themes like these I willingly depart,
And pass (discursive) to the Realms of Art.
Ye Muses nine! what Phrases ye employ,
What wondrous Terms t’ express æsthetic Joy!
As once in Years ere Babel’s Turrets rose
Contented Nations talk’d the self-same Prose:
As early Christians in the Days of Yore
Took what they wanted from a common Store:
So different Arts th’ astonished Reader sees
Pool all their Terms, then choose whate’er they please.
’Mid critick Crews (where Intellect abounds)
Sound sings in Colours, Colours shine in Sounds:
When mimick Groves Apelles decks with green,
Or Zeuxis limns the vespertinal Scene,
Staccato Tints delight th’ auscultant Eye
And soft Andantes paint the conscious Sky:
Nor less, when Musick holds the list’ning Throng,
How crisply lucent glows th’ entrancing Song!
Each loud Sonata boasts its lively Hue,
And Fugues are red, and Symphonies are blue.
Not mine to deem your Epithets misplac’d,
Ye learned Arbiters of publick Taste!
Yet such th’ Effect on merely human Wit,
That Esperanto is a Joke to it.
 
 
Hail, Terminology! celestial Maid!
Portress of Science, Guide to Art and Trade!
I see Democracy – an ardent Band
Who fain would read yet wish to understand —
Compell’d that Goal in alien Tongues to seek,
Fly for Relief to Necessary Greek,
Claim as their Right (advised by Mr. Snow)
The sweet Simplicity of ὁ ἡ τό, —
While Dons con English till they’re pale and lean,
And Candidates in Mods do English for Unseen!
 

THE PUPILS’ POINT OF VIEW

 
Relate, my Muse, the fame of him
   Whose calling and peculiar mission
It was to wage with courage grim
   A battle ’gainst effete Tradition!
When Movements moved, with holy zest
   He scaled the breach and led the stormers, —
And was among the first and best
   Of Educational Reformers.
 
 
He saw the Boy at Public Schools
   Regard his books with fear and loathing,
From Latin’s arbitrary rules
   Deriving practically nothing: —
He said, – “O bounding human Boys,
   Of all the fare whereon you batten,
What chiefly mars your simple joys?”
   With one accord they answered “Latin!”
 
 
“Exactly so,” th’ Inquirer cried,
   “This is the lore which cramps and stunts us;
O how can pedagogues abide
   A course that makes their pupils dunces?
Since with the rules of Latin Prose
   They can’t be brought to yield compliance,
This Fact conclusively it shows —
   They’ve all a natural bent for Science!”
 
 
They sought for Scientific Truth,
   And pedagogues with books and birches
Guided the faltering steps of Youth
   In biological researches:
The infant in his nurse’s care
   In Science’ terms was taught to stammer:
They practised vivisection where
   They used to cut their Latin grammar;
 
 
’Twas all in vain – the Human Boy
   Remained unalterably chilly:
Still less than Virgil’s tale of Troy
   He liked compulsory bacilli!
Much grieved the Zealot was thereat: —
   “We’ll try,” he said, “a course of Spelling”.
But O, the way they hated that
   Quite overcomes my power of telling!
 
 
“There must be ways,” the good man said,
   “(Though hitherto perhaps we’ve missed ’em)
Of putting things within the head:
   We’ve something wrong about the System:”
And musing on the sacred flame
   Of Genius, and the cause that hid it,
He unto this conclusion came —
   Compulsion was the thing that did it.
 
 
“Within the Boy’s aspiring brain
   For Study still there lies a craving,
And what is won against the grain
   Is never really worth the having;
This boasted Categorical
   Imperative is clearly vicious, —
Pastors and masters, one and all,
   Must ascertain their pupils’ wishes!”
 
 
And now those simple human Boys, —
   All, to a boy, for Culture yearning, —
No pedagogues with idle noise
   Impede upon the path of Learning: —
Released from books and teachers both,
   No intellectual pastures feed ’em;
And, if they lose in mental growth,
   Think how they gain in moral freedom!
 

HINTS FOR THE TRANSACTION OF PUBLIC BUSINESS

Of a Cheerful Hope

 
Whene’er you do to Meetings go, as many such there be
(And few and far those persons are who home return to tea),
Then take with you this principle, to cheer you on your way —
The less there is to talk about, the more there is to say.
 

Of an Exordium

 
Consult your hearers’ happiness, and state for their relief
That you’ll avoid prolixity and study to be brief:
For if you can’t be brief at once, ’twill comfort them to know
That you’ll arrive at brevity in half an hour or so.
 

Of Obedience to Rule

 
Should e’er the Chairman censure you, as Chairmen oft will do,
And tell you that you miss the point, and bid you keep thereto,
(Though points are things, by Euclid’s law, that always must be missed —
They have no parts or magnitude, and therefore don’t exist) —
Obey at once the Chairman’s hest (because, as you’re aware,
It is a most improper thing to argue with the Chair),
Accept his ruling patiently, without superfluous fuss,
And state the things you might have said – unless he’d ruled it thus.
 

Of a Peroration

 
And when you’ve spent your arguments yet somehow still go on
(It shows a want of enterprise to stop because you’ve done),
Don’t search about for topics new or vex your weary brain,
But take what someone else has said and say it all again.
 

Of Impartiality

 
And when at last your speech is o’er, be careful if you can
That none may hint – a horrid charge – that you’re a Party Man:
So speak for this and speak for that as blithely as you may,
But keep your mental balance true, and
            Vote the other Way.
 

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY

 
Two youths there were in days of yore
   Called Jones and Robinson.
Jones had abilities galore,
   While Robinson had none.
 
 
They met with corresponding fates:
   And Jones, that genius proud,
Obtained in time a First in Greats:
   While Robinson was ploughed.
 
 
Jones hoped that mental gifts like his
   Might gain a Fellowship:
But ah! full many a slip there is
   Between the cup and lip:
 
 
“You have a brain,” the College said,
   “Which unassisted soars:
’Tis not for Colleges to aid
   Abilities like yours!
 
 
Go – wealth awaits your gathering hand,
   And empires crave your rule!
But Fellowships like ours are planned
   To help the helpless fool.”
 
 
He tried the Press: he tried the Bar:
   But still the Bar and Press
Said, “Not for him our openings are
   Whose gifts ensure success:
 
 
Such posts are meant (’tis justice plain)
   For those unhappy chaps
(Like Robinson) whom lack of brain
   Unfairly handicaps!”
 
 
And now – yet check the rising tear:
   It seems that long ago
Those Founders whom we all revere
   Meant it to happen so —
 
 
Some lack of necessary food,
   All in a garret lone,
Has ended Jones.  I thought it would.
   But Robinson’s a Don.
 

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS

By Lambda Minus

 
A rumour and rumbling volcanic
   Is heard in the Radical Press,
And Presidents tremble in panic
   And Wardens their terrors confess:
How each with anxiety shivers,
   The Dean with his fines and his gates,
The ruffian who ragged me in Divvers,
   The pedant who ploughed me in Greats!
 
 
The doctrines degrading they taught, and
   The Progress they nipped in the bud:
The things that they did when they oughtn’t
   And failed to perform when they should:
The Questions prevented from burning,
   The Movements forbidden to move,
Recoil on their centres of learning,
   Their Parks and the System thereof!
 
 
Afar will Democracy chase it,
   That gang of impenitent Dons
Who drowned the occasional Placet
   By bawling their truculent Nons:
No idle and opulent College
   Will feed that obstructionist clique,
Those scoffers at Practical Knowledge
   Who vote for compulsory Greek.
 
 
And now when the Party of Labour,
   Asserting its virtuous sway,
Annexes the wealth of its neighbour
   In Labour’s traditional way, —
When purged of its various abuses
   By Birrell’s beneficent rule,
This haunt of the obsolete Muses
   Is changed to a charity school, —
 
 
When Fellows and bloated Professors
   Their stipends are forced to disgorge,
(Obeying the fiat of Messrs.
   Keir Hardie and Burns and Lloyd George)
Deprived by the wrath of the Nation
   Of all their unmerited aids,
Perhaps to escape from starvation
   They’ll take to respectable trades!
 
 
O wholly delectable vision!
   I view with excusable glee
The fate of the shallow precisian
   Who failed to appreciate Me; —
I fancy I see myself tossing
   With blandly contemptuous mien
A penny for sweeping a crossing
   To him who was formerly Dean!
 

DIPLOMAS IN ARCHITECTURE AT CAMBRIDGE

(“Education differs from technical training.” – Expert opinion in a letter to the Times.)

 
Not in vain with quaint devices
   Infants of the age of four
Build their mimic edifices
   All upon the nursery floor;
Neither is the presage missed
By the Educationist,
When he doth the fact recall
How that Balbus built a wall!
 
 
Thus I mused on such-like theses,
   While my errant fancy swam
Through the circumambient breezes
   To the silver streams of Cam, —
There observed with pleased surprise
Ancient Universities
Still in touch at every stage
With the Progress of the Age;
 
 
There, released from sloth and coma
   (Alma Mater’s chief defect),
There they grant a new Diploma
   To the budding Architect,
Take the blighted Builder’s art
To their academic heart,
Hope it may in time become
Part of their curriculum:
 
 
There they tell their College Porters
   Not to think it strange or odd
When a load of bricks and mortar’s
   Dumped within the College quad;
No indignant Tutor hauls
Him who scales the College walls, —
Plying on that airy perch
Architectural Research!
 
 
Thus I sang: I seemed to see an
   Epoch made, the Future’s guide;
But my glad exultant pæan
   Was not wholly justified:
Men whose names we all revere,
Stars in Architecture’s sphere,
Phrases used which don’t imply
Any genuine sympathy:
 
 
Ch-mpn-ys, Bl-mfield, T. G. J-cks-n,
   Hushed my lyre’s triumphant string —
Said in limpid Anglo-Saxon
   What they thought about the thing:
“Seats of learning are designed
For to Educate the Mind,
Not to teach a craft or trade,”
That was what these persons said!
 
 
What! and must a thwarted Nation
   Draw the obvious inference?
What! a Liberal Education
   Doesn’t mean the quest of pence?
(Really, this extremely crude
Obscurantist attitude
Isn’t quite what one expects
From distinguished Architects!)
 
 
Here’s another dear illusion
   Reft away and wholly gone:
O the spiritual confusion
   Of the pained progressive Don!
If the facts are quite correct
As regards the Architect,
Comes the question, plain and clear,
How about the Engineer?
 

ICHABOD: A MONODY

 
Now is the time when everything is glad,
Their vernal greenery the fields renew,
   Each feathered songster chants with livelier tone,
And lambkins leap and cloudless skies are blue,
   And all is gay and cheerful: – I alone
         Am singularly sad;
Mine erstwhile happiness and calm content
   Yields to a sense of sorrowful surprise:
   Things that I thought were thus, are otherwise:
And all is grief, and disillusionment.
 
 
For He, who did in everything surpass
Our common world, – the Good, the Truly Great,
   The Working Man, who shamed with standards high
Our obscurantists unregenerate, —
   Is not, ’twould seem, better than you, or I,
      Or any other ass:
The vision’s faded, as a snowflake melts;
   Fallen is that idol from his high renown:
   He hath waxed fat, and kicked, and tumbled down,
And we must seek ensamples somewhere else!
 
 
Where is it, Comrades! in this direful day —
That noble zeal for academic lore,
   That reverence due for discipline, in which
He used to shine conspicuously o’er
   The Brainless Athlete and the Idle Rich?
      O, does he now display
That ample breadth of calm impartial view,
   That sober judgment and that balanced mind,
   Which we were taught that we should always find,
O R-skin College, domiciled in you?
 
 
I have a Pupil: when his mental food
Fails (as it will) his appetite to sate,
   What! does that patient much-enduring elf
Proclaim a strike? set pickets at my gate?
   Boycott my lectures? give them for himself?
      (Full oft I wish he would:)
Nay – when he finds those lectures dull and flat,
   He asks no other: new ones might be worse:
   Too well he knows that Cosmos’ ordered course
Meant him to hear, and me to talk like that.
 
 
Also I own I’m disappointed by
Your friends and patrons, British Working Man!
   For they, methought, were champions of the Cause,
Fighters for Freedom, foremost in the van,
   Not servile scruplers, bound by rules and laws,
      Not men who dealt in dry
Respectable traditions: leaders true,
   No timid Moderates, who would define
   Too strict a boundary ’twixt Mine and Thine,
Potential martyrs, heart and soul with you: —
 
 
’Twas all illusion: they would feed you with
Mere talks on Temperance: when your spirit’s wings
   Would soar to Sociology alone,
Whereby will come that blessed state of things
   When none has property to call his own,
      They give you – Adam Smith.
These too are fall’n: ah me, that I should live
   To hear our brightest Radicals and best
   By angry Labour in such terms addressed
As might apply to a Conservative!
 
 
To this conclusion I perforce must come,
’Twere best we parted: seeing that we, ’twould seem,
   Haply have no appreciation of
Your high ambitions and your aims supreme,
   Nor can we hope that you should greatly love
      Our mental pabulum:
Depart, O Comrades! to some happier sphere
   Where you can still be nobly on the make,
   And mine, or plumb, or brew, or butch, or bake, —
Best to depart, and leave us mouldering here!
 
 
Yea, if ye scorn our learning overmuch,
Misguided sons of horny-handed toil!
   Yet discontented with your lowly lot
Still pine to burn the sad nocturnal oil
   ’Mid academic culture, or ’mid what
      Describes itself as such —
Go elsewhere, O my brothers! only go
   To Bath, to Birmingham – where’er the Don
   Teaches the sacred art of Getting On, —
– It is not far from here to Jericho.
 

THE PANACEA

 
It is Research of which I sing,
Research, that salutary thing!
None can succeed, in World or Church,
Who does not prosecute Research:
   For some read books, and toil thereat
      Their intellect to waken:
   But if you think Research is that
      You’re very much mistaken.
 
 
All in Columbia’s blesséd States
They have no Smalls, or Mods, or Greats,
Nor do their faculties benumb
With any cold curriculum:
   O no! for there the ambitious Boy,
      Released from schools and birches,
   At once pursues with studious joy
      Original Researches:
 
 
A happy lot that Student’s is,
– I wish that mine were like to his, —
Where in the bud no pedants nip
His Services to Scholarship:
   And none need read with care and pain
      Rome’s History, or Greece’s,
   But each from his creative brain
      Evolves semestrial Theses!
 
 
On books to pore is not the kind
Of thing to please the serious mind, —
I do not very greatly care
For such unsatisfying fare:
   To seek the lore that in them lurks
      Would last ad infinitum:
   Let others read immortal works, —
      I much prefer to write ’em!
 

THE HEROIC AGE

 
When I ponder o’er the pages of the old romantic ages, ere the world grew cold and gray,
When there wasn’t a relation between Oxford and the Nation, or a Movement every day,
How I marvel at the glamour (in these duller days and tamer) which informed those scenes of glee,
At the glamour and the glory of contemporary story, and the Eights as they used to be!
 
 
It is obvious that the weather must have differed altogether from the kind that now we know:
I arise from reading Fiction with the permanent conviction that it did not hail, nor snow:
For each fair and youthful charmer had a summer sun to warm her and a bran new frock and hat, —
In the progress of the lustres, when the crowd of Fashion musters it has grown too wise for that.
 
 
Every boat from keel to rigger was a grand ideal figure as it skimmed those Wavelets Blue,
While the Heroes who propelled ’em were comparatively seldom of a commonplace type, like you —
In their strength and in their science they were positively giants, through the gorgeous days of old,
Still an Admirable Crichton in those lieben alten Zeiten was the oarsman brave and bold:
 
 
He could row devoid of training, and (it hardly needs explaining) got a quite unique degree:
With his blushing honours laden, he espoused a lovely maiden at the end of Volume Three:
This alone he had to grieve for – that he’d nothing more to live for, or expect from Fortune’s whim:
For I never could discover, when his Oxford days were over, what the world could hold for him!
 
 
O the rapture singlehearted of that Period has departed, with its views ornate of Man,
And I think it won’t come back till we restore the Pterodactyl, or revive the late Queen Anne:
We have grown in mental stature, and we Go Direct to Nature, in these days of stress and strife,
And the hero of a novel in a palace or a hovel is intolerably True to Life: —
 
 
Not an infant learns to toddle but efficiency’s his model, which he still pursues with rage,
In a manner inconsistent with the methods dim and distant of that mid-Victorian age:
For that atmosphere Elysian it has faded from our vision and has gone where the old tales go,
And I really don’t know whether I regret altogether – but the simple fact is so.
 

MAKERS OF HISTORY

 
Minstrels! who your choicest notes
Keep for men who row in boats,
Mark with what exalted mien
Comes the Hero of the Scene!
He, amid the festal swarm,
Fashion’s glass and mould of form,
How in shape and how in features
Far surpassing other creatures,
How incomparable to
Common things like me and you!
He in whose transcendent state
All the ages culminate —
Could we ever keep him thus,
How delightful ’twere for us!
Could he, ’mid the admiring throng,
Ever beauteous, ever young,
Still abide for ever pent
In his true environment,
Wear that aureole still which now
Decks his high victorious brow!
   Out, alas! that Fortune can’t
Ever give us what we want!
He must quit this vernal stage:
He must sink to middle age
(E’en the Poet’s soaring wit
Scarcely can envisage it):
Go with men of common clay
In to business every day:
Be perhaps a Brewer, or
Haply a Solicitor, —
None the fact to notice that
Haloes once adorned his hat:
Ay! the ways of Fate are odd:
Men are mortal..  Ichabod.
 

* * * * *

 
Yet shall stay by stream and tree
Something still of what was He, —
Plainly put, his More or Less
Immaterial Consciousness, —
Very fine and very large,
Floating o’er his College barge:
Always while the world continues
Bards shall sing his thews and sinews, —
Here he rowed and here he ran,
Being rather more than man; —
Thus as ages onward go
Still he’ll great and greater grow,
Larger still in prose or rhyme
Looming down the aisles of time,
Till he sit, sublime and vast,
’Mid the Giants of the Past,
Men who lived in days of old
(Ch-tty, W-dg-te, N-ck-lls, G-ld),
Lived and rowed in ages dark
Long ere Noah built the Ark,
Very, very famous oars,
Mighty men in Eights and Fours,
Towering o’er our Browns and Smiths
Huge and grey, like Monoliths.
   Thus the Hero’s happy fate
Keeps in store a blissful state,
All adown the Future dim,
Nearly worthy e’en of Him!