Hurrah for gadding about
   Of a Saturday afternoon,
In the light of research setting out,
   Coming home in the light of the moon!

 Hurrah for Guardbridge, and the mill
   Where one learns how paper is made! 
Hurrah for the samples that fill
   One’s drawer with the finest cream-laid!

Hurrah for the Brewery visit
   And beer in liberal doses! 
In the cause of Science, what is it
   But inspecting a technical process?

Hurrah for a trip to Dundee
   To 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!

 IMITATED FROM WORDSWORTH

He brought a team from Inversnaid
   To play our Third Fifteen,
A man whom none of us had played
   And very few had seen.

He weighed not less than eighteen stone,
   And to a practised eye
He seemed as little fit to run
   As 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!

 REFLECTIONS OF A MAGISTRAND

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 too
Back 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 heaven
I 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?