It seems a hundred years or moreSince I, with note-book, ink and pen,In cap and gown, first trod the floorWhich I have often trod since then;Yet well do I remember when,With fifty other fond fanatics,I sought delights beyond my ken,The deep delights of Mathematics.
I knew that two and two made four,I felt that five times two were ten,But, as for all profounder lore,The robin redbreast or the wren,The sparrow, whether cock or hen,Knew quite as much about Quadratics,Was less confused byxandn,The deep delights of Mathematics.
The Asses’ Bridge I passed not o’er,I floundered in the noisome fenWhich lies behind it and before;I wandered in the gloomy glenWhere Surds and Factors have their den.But when I saw the pit of Statics,I said Good-bye, Farewell, Amen!The deep delights of Mathematics.
O Bejants! blessed, beardless men,Who strive with Euclid in your attics,For worlds I would not taste againThe deep delights of Mathematics.
I loved a little maidenIn the golden years gone by;She lived in a mill, as they all do(There is doubtless a reason why).But she faded in the autumnWhen the leaves began to fade,And the night before she faded,These words to me she said:‘Do not forget me, Henry,Be noble and brave and true;But I must not bide, for the world is wide,And the sky above is blue.’
So I said farewell to my darling,And sailed away and came back;And the good shipJanewas in port again,And I found that they all loved Jack.But Polly and I were sweethearts,As all the neighbours know,Before I met with the mill-girlTwenty years ago.So I thought I would go and see her,But alas, she had faded too!She could not bide, for the world was wide,And the sky above was blue.
And now I can only rememberThe maid—the maid of the mill,And Polly, and one or two othersIn the churchyard over the hill.And I sadly ask the question,As I weep in the yew-tree’s shadeWith my elbow on one of their tombstones,‘Ah, why did they all of them fade?’And the answer I half expectedComes from the solemn yew,‘They could none of them bide, for the world was wide,And the sky above was blue.’
This is the time when larks are singing loudAnd higher still ascending and more high,This is the time when many a fleecy cloudRuns lamb-like on the pastures of the sky,This is the time when most I love to lieStretched on the links, now listening to the sea,Now looking at the train that dawdles by;But James is going in for his degree.
James is my brother. He has twice been ploughed,Yet he intends to have another shy,Hoping to pass (as he says) in a crowd.Sanguine is James, but not so sanguine I.If you demand my reason, I reply:Because he reads no Greek without a keyAnd spells Thucydides c-i-d-y;Yet James is going in for his degree.
No doubt, if the authorities allowedThe taking in of Bohns, he might defyThe stiffest paper that has ever cowedA timid candidate and made him fly.Without such aids, he all as well may tryTo cultivate the people of Dundee,Or lead the camel through the needle’s eye;Yet James is going in for his degree.
Vain are the efforts hapless mortals plyTo climb of knowledge the forbidden tree;Yet still about its roots they strive and cry,And James is going in for his degree.
Hurrah for the Science Club!Join it, ye fourth year men;Join it, thou smooth-cheeked scrub,Whose years scarce number ten
Join it, divines most grave;Science, as all men know,As a friend the Church may save,But may damage her as a foe.
(And in any case it is well,If attacking insidious doubt,Or devoting H--- to H---,To know what you’re talking about.)
Hurrah for the lang-nebbit word!Hurrah for the erudite phrase,That in Dura Den shall be heard,That shall echo on Kinkell Braes!
Hurrah for the spoils of the links(The golf-ball as well as the daisy)!Hurrah for explosions and stinksTo set half the landladies crazy!
Hurrah for the fragments of boulders,Surpassing in size and in weight,To be carried home on the shouldersAnd laid on the table in state!
Hurrah for the flying-machineLong buried from sight in a cupboard,With bones that would never have beenDesired of old Mother Hubbard!
Hurrah for the hazardous boat,For the crabs (of all kinds) to be caught,For the eggs on the surface that float,And the lump-sucker curiously wrought!
Hurrah for the filling of tanksIn the shanty down by the shore,For the Royal Society’s thanks,With Fellowships flying galore!
Hurrah for discourses on worms,Where one listens and comes awayWith a stock of bewildering terms,And nothing whatever to pay!
Hurrah for gadding aboutOf a Saturday afternoon,In the light of research setting out,Coming home in the light of the moon!
Hurrah for Guardbridge, and the millWhere one learns how paper is made!Hurrah for the samples that fillOne’s drawer with the finest cream-laid!
Hurrah for the Brewery visitAnd beer in liberal doses!In the cause of Science, what is itBut inspecting a technical process?
Hurrah for a trip to DundeeTo study the spinning of jute!Hurrah for a restaurant tea,And a sight of the Tay Bridge to boot!
Hurrah, after every excursion,To feel one’s improving one’s mind,With the smallest amount of exertion,And that of the pleasantest kind!
He brought a team from InversnaidTo play our Third Fifteen,A man whom none of us had playedAnd very few had seen.
He weighed not less than eighteen stone,And to a practised eyeHe seemed as little fit to runAs he was fit to fly.
He looked so clumsy and so slow,And made so little fuss;But he got in behind—and oh,The difference to us!
on returning to st. andrews
In the hard familiar horse-box I am sitting once again;Creeping back to old St. Andrews comes the slow North British train,
Bearing bejants with their luggage (boxes full of heavy books,Which the porter, hot and tipless, eyes with unforgiving looks),
Bearing third year men and second, bearing them and bearing me,Who am now a fourth year magnate with two parts of my degree.
We have started off from Leuchars, and my thoughts have started tooBack to times when this sensation was entirely fresh and new.
When I marvelled at the towers beyond the Eden’s wide expanse,Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father’s manse
With some money in his pocket, with some down upon his cheek,With the elements of Latin, with the rudiments of Greek.
And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,Underneath the towers he looks at, in among the throngs of men,
Men from Fife and men from Forfar, from the High School of Dundee,Ten or twelve from other counties, and from England two or three.
Oh, the Bursary Competition! oh, the wonder and the rage,When I saw my name omitted from the schedule in the cage!
Grief is strong but youth elastic, and I rallied from the blow,For I felt that there were few things in the world I did not know.
Then my ready-made opinions upon all things under heavenI declaimed with sound and fury, to an audience of eleven
Gathered in the Logic class-room, sworn to settle the debate,Does the Stage upon the whole demoralise or elevate?
This and other joys I tasted. I became a Volunteer,MurmuringDulce et decorumin the Battery-Sergeant’s ear;
Joined the Golf Club, and with others of an afternoon was seenVainly searching in the whins, or foozling on the putting-green;
Took a minor part in Readings; lifted up my voice and sangAt the Musical rehearsals, till the class-room rafters rang;
Wrote long poems for the Column; entered for the S. R. C,And, if I remember rightly, was thrown out by twenty-three;
Ground a little for my classes, till the hour of nine or ten,When I read a decent novel or went out to see some men.
So I reaped the large experience which has made me what I am,Far removed from bejanthood as is St. Andrews from Siam.
But with age and with experience disenchantment comes to all,Even pleasure on the keenest appetite at last will pall.
Had I now a hundred pounds, a hundred pounds would I bestowTo enjoy the loud solatium as I did three years ago,
When the songs were less familiar, less familiar too the pies,And I did not mind receiving orange-peel between the eyes.
Yet, in spite of disenchantment, and in spite of finding outThere are some things in the world that I am hardly sure about,
Still sufficient of illusion and inexplicable graceHangs about the grey old town to make it a delightful place.
Though solatiums charm no longer, though a gaudeamus failsWith its atmosphere unwholesome to expand my spirit’s sails,
Though rectorial elections are if anything a bore,And I do not care to carry dripping torches any more,
Though my soul for Moral lectures does not vehemently yearn,Though the north-east winds are bitter—I am willing to return.
At this point in my reflections, on the left the Links expand,Many a whin bush full of prickles, many a bunker full of sand.
And I see distinguished club-men, whom I only know by sight,Old, obese, and scarlet-coated, playing golf with all their might;
As they were three years ago, when first I travelled by this train,As they will be three years hence, if I should come this way again.
What to them is train or traveller? what to them the flight of time?But we draw too near the station to indulge in the sublime.
In a minute at the furthest on the platform I shall stand,Waiting till they take my trunk out, with my hat-box in my hand.
As the railway train approaches and the train of thought recedes,I behold Professor --- in a brand new suit of tweeds.
Oh for the nights when we used to sitIn the firelight’s glow or flicker,With the gas turned low and our pipes all lit,And the air fast growing thicker;
When you, enthroned in the big arm-chair,Would spin for us yarns unending,Your voice and accent and pensive airWith the narrative subtly blending!
Oh for the bleak and wintry daysWhen we set our blood in motion,Leaping the rocks below the braesAnd wetting our feet in the ocean,
Or shying at marks for moderate sums(A penny a hit, you remember),With aching fingers and purple thumbs,In the merry month of December!
There is little doubt we were very daft,And our sports, like the stakes, were trifling;While the air of the room where we talked and laughedWas often unpleasantly stifling.
Now we are grave and sensible men,And wrinkles our brows embellish,And I fear we shall never relish againThe pleasures we used to relish.
And I fear we never again shall go,The cold and weariness scorning,For a ten mile walk through the frozen snowAt one o’clock in the morning:
Out by Cameron, in by the Grange,And to bed as the moon descended . . .To you and to me there has come a change,And the days of our youth are ended.
In youth with diligence he toiledA Roman nose to gain,But though a decent pug was spoiled,A pug it did remain.
from the unpublished remains of edgar allan poe
In the oldest of our alleys,By good bejants tenanted,Once a man whose name was Wallace—William Wallace—reared his head.Rowdy Bejant in the collegeHe was styled:Never had these halls of knowledgeWelcomed waster half so wild!
Tassel blue and long and silkenFrom his cap did float and flow(This was cast into the SwilcanTwo months ago);And every gentle air that sportedWith his red gown,Displayed a suit of clothes, reportedThe most alarming in the town.
Wanderers in that ancient alleyThrough his luminous window sawSpirits come continuallyFrom a case well packed with straw,Just behind the chair where, sittingWith air serene,And in a blazer loosely fitting,The owner of the bunk was seen.
And all with cards and counters strayingWas the place littered o’er,With which sat playing, playing, playing,And wrangling evermore,A group of fellows, whose chief functionWas to proclaim,In voices of surpassing unction,Their luck and losses in the game.
But stately things, in robes of learning,Discussed one day the bejant’s fate:Ah, let us mourn him unreturning,For they resolved to rusticate!And now the glory he inherits,Thus dished and doomed,Is largely founded on the meritsOf the Old Tom consumed.
And wanderers, now, within that alleyThrough the half-open shutters see,Old crones, that talk continuallyIn a discordant minor key:While, with a kind of nervous shiver,Past the front door,His former set go by for ever,But knock—or ring—no more.
For the information of those who have not the happiness to be members of the University of St. Andrews, it may be well to explain a few terms. Abejantis an undergraduate student of the first year. In his second year he becomes asemi, in his third atertian, and in his fourth amagistrand. The last would seem to be a gerundive form, implying that a man at the end of his fourth year ought to be made a Master of Arts; but unfortunately this does not always happen. Adivineis a student in Divinity. Awasteris a man of idle and (it may be) profligate habits. Agrinder, on the contrary, is one who ‘grinds’ or reads with an unusual degree of application. Abunkis the lodging or abode in St. Andrews of any student. Aspreeis not necessarily an entertainment of rowdy character; the most decorous Professorial dinner-party would be called a spree. Asolatiumis a Debating Society spree, held in December or January; agaudeamusis a festival of the same kind, only rather more ambitious, celebrated towards the close of the session.Sessionwould be rendered in England by‘term.’ TheCompetition(forBursaries), or the ‘Comp.,’ is the examination for entrance scholarships. Thecageis a curious structure of glass, iron, and wood, in which notices and examination lists are posted. The lettersS. R. C. denote the Students’ Representative Council. AnL.L.A. is a Lady Literate in Arts.Math. (as the discerning reader will not be slow to perceive) is an abbreviation, endearing or otherwise, of the word Mathematics.Moralstands for Moral Philosophy.Prof. is a shortened form of Professor, andcertif. of certificate.Plough, pluck, andspinare used indifferently, to signify the action of an examiner in rejecting a candidate for the M.A. or any other degree. It should be mentioned that the degree of B.A. is not now conferred by the Universities of Scotland.
Page 4. Euripides:Hippolytus, 70-87.
Page 22.Odes,i.ii.
Page 52.The Town Water. The state of things described in this ballad, so far as the quality of St. Andrews water is concerned, has long since been remedied. As to the demeanour of the Bailies and Councillors, I cannot speak with the same certainty.
Page 64.Milton, a name to adorn the Cross Keys. Mr. Milton’s name is no longer associated with this time-honoured tavern, but with a new hotel.
Page 86. ΑΙΕΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΕΥΕΙΝ. The motto in the Upper Library Hall, where the ceremony of Graduation takes place.
Page 88. Catullus,ci.
Page 101.The shanty down by the shore. The St. Andrews Marine Biological Laboratory.
Page 117.This was cast into the Swilcan. The Swilcan Burn is a small stream which flows across the golfing links, and forms one of the hazards of the course.
EDINBURGHT. & A. CONSTABLEPrinters to Her Majesty