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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 MayCould guess the change that six months laterHas brought such wondrous disarrayUpon his alma mater?
Distracted by a world-wide strife,The calm routine of study ceases;And Oxford's academic lifeIs broken all to pieces.
No more the intellectual youthFeeds on perpetual paradoxes;No longer in the quest of truthThe mental compass boxes.
Gone are the old luxurious daysWhen, always craving something subtler,To Bergson's metaphysic mazeHe turned from Samuel Butler.
Linked by tho brotherhood of armsAll 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 leftAll at the leash are straining.
And grave professors, making lightOf all the load of anno domini,Devote the day to drill, the nightTo Clausewitz and Jomini.
While those who feel too old to fightFull nobly with the pen arc servingTo weld conflicting views of rightIn one resolve unswerving.
No more can essayists inveighAgainst the youth of Oxford, slightingHer "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 restUpon the plains of Flanders.
No; when two thousand of her sonsAre 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.
