Part 6 (1/2)

UNITY PUT QUARTERLY[1].

By A. C. S.

The Centuries kiss and commingle, Cling, clasp, and are knit in a chain; No cycle but scorns to be single, No two but demur to be twain, 'Till the land of the lute and the love-tale Be bride of the boreal breast, And the dawn with the darkness shall dovetail, The East with the West.

The desire of the grey for the dun nights Is that of the dun for the grey; The tales of the Thousand and One Nights Touch lips with 'The Times' of to-day.-- Come, chasten the cheap with the cla.s.sic; Choose, Churton, thy chair and thy cla.s.s, Mix, melt in the must that is Ma.s.sic The beer that is Ba.s.s!

Omnipotent age of the Aorist!

Infinitely freely exact!-- As the fragrance of fiction is fairest If frayed in the furnace of fact-- Though nine be the Muses in number There is hope if the handbook be one,-- Dispelling the planets that c.u.mber The path of the sun.

Though crimson thy hands and thy hood be With the blood of a brother betrayed, O Would-be-Professor of Would-be, We call thee to bless and to aid.

Trans.m.u.ted would travel with Er, see The Land of the Rolling of Logs, Charmed, chained to thy side, as to Circe The Ithacan hogs.

O bourne of the black and the G.o.dly!

O land where the good n.i.g.g.e.rs go.

With the books that are borrowed of Bodley, Old moons and our castaway clo'!

There, there, till the roses be ripened Rebuke us, revile, and review, Then take thee thine annual stipend So long over-due.

[1] Suggested by an Article in the _Quarterly Review_, enforcing the unity of literature ancient and modern, and the necessity of providing a new School of Literature in Oxford.

FIRE!

By Sir W. S.

Written on the occasion of the visit of the United Fire Brigades to Oxford, 1887.

I.

St. Giles's street is fair and wide, St. Giles's street is long; But long or wide, may naught abide Therein of guile or wrong; For through St. Giles's, to and fro, The mild ecclesiastics go From prime to evensong.

It were a fearsome task, perdie!

To sin in such good company.

II.

Long had the slanting beam of day Proclaimed the Thirtieth of May Ere now, erect, its fiery heat Illumined all that hallowed street, And breathing benediction on Thy serried battlements, St. John, Suffused at once with equal glow The cl.u.s.ter'd Archipelago, The Art Professor's studio And Mr. Greenwood's shop, Thy building, Pusey, where below The stout Salvation soldiers blow The cornet till they drop; Thine, Balliol, where we move, and oh!

Thine, Randolph, where we stop.

III.