“By the sight of my song-flight of cases
That bears, on wings woven of rhyme,
Names set for a sign in high places
By sentence of men of old time;
From all counties they meet and they mingle,
Dead suitors whom Westminster saw;
They are many, but your name is singles
Pure flower of pure law.

* * * * *

“So I pour you this drink of my verses,
Of learning made lovely with lays,
Song bitter and sweet that reheares
The deeds of your eminent days;
Yea, in these evil days from their reading
Some profit a student shall draw,
Though some points are of obsolete pleading,
And some are not law.

    “Though the Courts, that were manifold, dwindle
      To divers Divisions of One,
    And no fire from your face may rekindle
      The light of old learning undone,
    We have suitors and briefs for our payment,
      While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas,
    We talk moonshine with wigs for our raiment,
      Not sinking the fees.”

Some five-and-twenty years ago there appeared the first number of a magazine called The Dark Blue.  It was published in London, but was understood to represent in some occult way the thought and life of Young Oxford, and its contributors were mainly Oxford men.  The first number contained an amazing ditty called “The Sun of my Songs.”  It was dark, and mystic, and transcendental, and unintelligible.  It dealt extensively in strange words and cryptic phrases.  One verse I must transcribe:—­

      “Yet all your song
      Is—­’Ding dong,
      Summer is dead,
      Spring is dead—­
    O my heart, and O my head
    Go a-singing a silly song
      All wrong,
      For all is dead. 
        Ding dong,
      And I am dead! 
        Dong!’”

I quote thus fully because Cambridge, never backward in poking fun at her more romantic sister, shortly afterwards produced an excellent little magazine named sarcastically The Light Green, and devoted to the ridicule of its cerulean rival.  The poem from which I have just quoted was thus burlesqued, if, indeed, burlesque of such a composition were possible:—­

    “Ding dong, ding dong,
    There goes the gong;
    Dick, come along,
      It is time for dinner
    Wash your face,
    Take your place. 
    Where’s your grace,
      You little sinner?

    “Baby cry,
     Wipe his eye. 
     Baby good,
     Give him food. 
     Baby sleepy,
     Go to bed. 
     Baby naughty,
     Smack his head!”

The Light Green, which had only an ephemeral life, was, I have always heard, entirely, or almost entirely, the work of one undergraduate, who died young—­Arthur Clement Hilton, of, St. John’s.[32] He certainly had the knack of catching and reproducing style.  In the “May Exam.,” a really good imitation of the “May Queen,” the departing undergraduate thus addresses his “gyp":—­