CONFERENCES ON

BOOKS AND MEN

[Beeching, H. C. (Henry Charles)
1859-1811]

BY THE AUTHOR OF

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

LONDON

SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE

1900

(All rights reserved)

BUHTIGRAD 4202 431 d'art 10120106

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.