TEMPORA MUTANTUR.

  There once was a time when I revelled in
      rhyme, with Valentines deluged my cousins,

  Translated Tibullus and half of Catullus, and
      poems produced by the dozens.

  Now my tale is nigh told, for my blood’s running
      cold, all my laurels lie yellow and faded.

  “We have come to the boss;” [1] like a weary old
      hoss, poor Pegasus limps, and is jaded.

  And yet Mr. Editor, like a stern creditor, duns
      me for this or that article,

  Though he very well knows that of Verse and of
      prose I am stripped to the very last particle.

  What shall I write of?  What subject indite of? 
      All my vis viva is failing;

  Emeritus sum; Mons Parnassus is dumb, and my
      prayers to the Nine unavailing.—­

  Thus in vain have I often attempted to soften
      the hard heart of Mr. Arenae;

  Like a sop, I must throw him some sort of a
      poem, in spite of unwilling Camenae.

* * * * * *

  No longer I roam in my Johnian home, no more
      in the “wilderness” wander;

  And absence we know, for the Poet says so,
      makes the heart of the lover grow fonder.

  I pine for the Cam, like a runaway lamb that
      misses his woolly-backed mother;

  I can find no relief for my passionate grief, nor
      my groanings disconsolate smother.

  Say, how are you all in our old College Hall? 
      Are the dinners more costly, or plainer?

  How are Lecturers, Tutors, Tobacco and Pewters,
      and how is my friend, the Complainer?

  Are the pupils of Merton, and students of Girton,
      increasing in numbers, or fewer?

  Are they pretty, or plain?  Humble-minded or
      vain?  Are they paler, or pinker, or bluer?

  How’s the party of stormers, our so-called
      Reformers?  Are Moral and Natural Sciences

  Improving men’s Minds?  Who the money now
      finds, for Museums, and all their appliances?

  Is Philosophy thriving, or sound sense reviving? 
      Is high-table talk metaphysic?

  Will dark blue or light have the best of the
      fight, at Putney and Mortlake and Chiswick?

  I often importune the favour of Fortune, that no
      misadventure may cross us,

  And Rhodes once again on the watery plain,
      may prove an aquatic Colossus.

  [N.B. since I wrote I must add a short note,
      by means of new fangled devices,

  Our “Three” was unseated, and we were
      defeated, and robbed of our laurels by Isis.]—­

  O oft do I dream of the muddy old stream, the
      Father of wisdom and knowledge,