Henry Charles Beeching,

CONFERENCES ON

BOOKS AND MEN

BY THE AUTHOR OF

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

LONDON

SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE

1900

(All rights reserved)

Reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine.

804 339

DEDICATED

WITH RESPECTFUL ADMIRATION TO THE
UNDERGRADUATES OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF OXFORD.

IN that old spring when I was young,
At Oxford, many a song was sung,
And undergraduate friends were willing
To buy them printed for a shilling.

Our songs were all of Oxford's bliss,
Her spires, her streams, her mysteries;

Of Love, and Death, and Change, and Fate,-

As known to th' Undergraduate.

Since then full twenty years are sped,
And most are married, some are dead;
Some sit as ministers of state,

And some as priests beg at their gate.

In all, the pulses fainter beat
And will not move in metric feet;
Despatches, sermons,-whatso goes
Into their brain comes out as prose.

Yet still their ink will flush to flame
If chance permits it Oxford's name ;
Still have they won the meed of wit,
If Oxford reads what they have writ.

551555

TC 7 s

ALLLN

NAR 24 55

U. OF M. BINDERY

But should the Undergraduate read,
O heart, then fame is fame indeed;
Th' o'er-tasked, ingenuous brow to smoothe
Once more, is to renew one's youth.

Then pardon, sirs, if I am bold
To offer, when the blood is cold,
Tame spirts of a parergic pen

To you, who taste both books and men.

URBANUS SYLVAN.