Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/173

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

February 17, 1915

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

127

Village Wit (to victim of ill-timed revelry). "Wotcher, William? How was Joffre when you left?"

OXFORD IN WAR TIME.

Who that behold her robed in May
Could guess the change that six months later
Has brought such wondrous disarray
Upon his alma mater?

Distracted by a world-wide strife,
The calm routine of study ceases;
And Oxford's academic life
Is broken all to pieces.

No more the intellectual youth
Feeds on perpetual paradoxes;
No longer in the quest of truth
The mental compass boxes.

Gone are the old luxurious days
When, always craving something subtler,
To Bergson's metaphysic maze
He turned from Samuel Butler.

Linked by tho brotherhood of arms
All jarring coteries are blended;
More cleverness no longer charms;
The cult of Blues is ended.

The boats are of their crews bereft:
The parks are given up to training;
The scanty hundreds who are left
All at the leash are straining.

And grave professors, making light
Of all the load of anno domini,
Devote the day to drill, the night
To Clausewitz and Jomini.

While those who feel too old to fight
Full nobly with the pen arc serving
To weld conflicting views of right
In one resolve unswerving.

No more can essayists inveigh
Against the youth of Oxford, slighting
Her "young barbarians all at play,"
When nine in ten are fighting,

And some, the goodliest and the best,
Beloved of comrades and commanders,
Have passed untimely to their rest
Upon the plains of Flanders.

No; when two thousand of her sons
Are mustered under Freedom's banner,
None can declaim—except the Huns—
Against the Oxford manner.

For lo! amid her spires and streams,
The lure of cloistered ease forsaking,
The dreamer, noble in her dreams,
Is nobler in her waking.

"Lest we forget."

In these days, when we have to be thankful that our country has not, like Belgium and France, been overrun by savages, the greater mercies we receive are apt to obscure the less. But Swansea does not forget the smaller mercies. According to a recent issue of The South Wales Daily Post, "The Swansea Town F.C. are coming for the second time to St. Nicholas' Church, Gloucester Place, Swansea, on Sunday evening next, at 6.30, when the directors, committee and the two full teams have promised to attend the service, that, in the words of the Rev. Percy Weston, will be in the nature of a thanksgiving service for their good fortune against Newcastle United."

Our compliments to the Rev. Percy Weston, pastor of this pious and patriot flock.