THE DELIGHTS OF MATHEMATICS
It seems a hundred years or more
Since I, with note-book, ink and pen,
In cap and gown, first trod the floor
Which I have often trod since then;
Yet well do I remember when,
With fifty other fond fanatics,
I sought delights beyond my ken,
The deep delights of Mathematics.
I knew that two and two made four,
I felt that five times two were ten,
But, as for all profounder lore,
The robin redbreast or the wren,
The sparrow, whether
cock or hen,
Knew quite as much about Quadratics,
Was less confused by x and n,
The deep delights of Mathematics.
The Asses’ Bridge I passed not o’er,
I floundered in the noisome fen
Which lies behind it and before;
I wandered in the gloomy glen
Where Surds and Factors have their den.
But when I saw the pit of Statics,
I said Good-bye, Farewell, Amen!
The deep delights of Mathematics.
O Bejants! blessed, beardless men,
Who strive with Euclid in your attics,
For worlds I would not taste again
The deep delights of Mathematics.
STANZAS FOR MUSIC
I loved a little maiden
In the golden years gone by;
She lived in a mill, as they all do
(There is doubtless a reason why).
But she faded in the autumn
When the leaves began to fade,
And the night before she faded,
These words to me she said:
‘Do not forget me, Henry,
Be noble and brave and true;
But I must not bide, for the world is wide,
And the sky above is blue.’
So I said farewell to my darling,
And sailed away and came back;
And the good ship
Jane was in port again,
And I found that they all loved Jack.
But Polly and I were sweethearts,
As all the neighbours know,
Before I met with the mill-girl
Twenty years ago.
So I thought I would go and see her,
But alas, she had faded too!
She could not bide, for the world was wide,
And the sky above was blue.
And now I can only remember
The maid—the maid of the mill,
And Polly, and one or two others
In the churchyard over the hill.
And I sadly ask the question,
As I weep in the yew-tree’s shade
With my elbow on one of their tombstones,
‘Ah, why did they all of them fade?’
And the answer I half
expected
Comes from the solemn yew,
‘They could none of them bide, for the world was wide,
And the sky above was blue.’
THE END OF APRIL
This is the time when larks are singing loud
And higher still ascending and more high,
This is the time when many a fleecy cloud
Runs lamb-like on the pastures of the sky,
This is the time when most I love to lie
Stretched on the links, now listening to the sea,
Now looking at the train that dawdles by;
But James is going in for his degree.
James is my brother. He has twice been ploughed,
Yet he intends to have another shy,
Hoping to pass (as he says) in a crowd.
Sanguine is James, but not so sanguine I.
If you demand my reason,
I reply:
Because he reads no Greek without a key
And spells Thucydides c-i-d-y;
Yet James is going in for his degree.
No doubt, if the authorities allowed
The taking in of Bohns, he might defy
The stiffest paper that has ever cowed
A timid candidate and made him fly.
Without such aids, he all as well may try
To cultivate the people of Dundee,
Or lead the camel through the needle’s eye;
Yet James is going in for his degree.
Vain are the efforts hapless mortals ply
To climb of knowledge the forbidden tree;
Yet still about its roots they strive and cry,
And James is going in for his degree.
THE SCIENCE CLUB
Hurrah for the Science Club!
Join it, ye fourth year men;
Join it, thou smooth-cheeked scrub,
Whose years scarce number ten
Join it, divines most grave;
Science, as all men know,
As a friend the Church may save,
But may damage her as a foe.
(And in any case it is well,
If attacking insidious doubt,
Or devoting H--- to H---,
To know what you’re talking about.)
Hurrah for the
lang-nebbit word!
Hurrah for the erudite phrase,
That in Dura Den shall be heard,
That shall echo on Kinkell Braes!
Hurrah for the spoils of the links
(The golf-ball as well as the daisy)!
Hurrah for explosions and stinks
To set half the landladies crazy!
Hurrah for the fragments of boulders,
Surpassing in size and in weight,
To be carried home on the shoulders
And laid on the table in state!
Hurrah for the flying-machine
Long buried from sight in a cupboard,
With bones that would never have been
Desired of old Mother Hubbard!
Hurrah for the
hazardous boat,
For the crabs (of all kinds) to be caught,
For the eggs on the surface that float,
And the lump-sucker curiously wrought!
Hurrah for the filling of tanks
In the shanty down by the shore,
For the Royal Society’s thanks,
With Fellowships flying galore!
Hurrah for discourses on worms,
Where one listens and comes away
With a stock of bewildering terms,
And nothing whatever to pay!
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?
This and other joys I tasted. I became a Volunteer,
Murmuring Dulce et decorum in the Battery-Sergeant’s ear;
Joined the Golf Club, and with others of an afternoon was seen
Vainly searching in the whins, or foozling on the putting-green;
Took a minor part in Readings; lifted up my voice and sang
At the Musical rehearsals, till the class-room rafters rang;
Wrote long poems
for the Column; entered for the S. R. C,
And, if I remember rightly, was thrown out by twenty-three;
Ground a little for my classes, till the hour of nine or ten,
When I read a decent novel or went out to see some men.
So I reaped the large experience which has made me what I am,
Far removed from bejanthood as is St. Andrews from Siam.
But with age and with experience disenchantment comes to all,
Even pleasure on the keenest appetite at last will pall.
Had I now a hundred
pounds, a hundred pounds would I bestow
To enjoy the loud solatium as I did three years ago,
When the songs were less familiar, less familiar too the pies,
And I did not mind receiving orange-peel between the eyes.
Yet, in spite of disenchantment, and in spite of finding out
There are some things in the world that I am hardly sure about,
Still sufficient of illusion and inexplicable grace
Hangs about the grey old town to make it a delightful place.
Though solatiums
charm no longer, though a gaudeamus fails
With its atmosphere unwholesome to expand my spirit’s sails,
Though rectorial elections are if anything a bore,
And I do not care to carry dripping torches any more,
Though my soul for Moral lectures does not vehemently yearn,
Though the north-east winds are bitter—I am willing to return.
At this point in my reflections, on the left the Links expand,
Many a whin bush full of prickles, many a bunker full of sand.
And I see distinguished
club-men, whom I only know by sight,
Old, obese, and scarlet-coated, playing golf with all their might;
As they were three years ago, when first I travelled by this train,
As they will be three years hence, if I should come this way again.
What to them is train or traveller? what to them the flight of time?
But we draw too near the station to indulge in the sublime.
In a minute at the furthest on the platform I shall stand,
Waiting till they take my trunk out, with my hat-box in my hand.
As the railway
train approaches and the train of thought recedes,
I behold Professor --- in a brand new suit of tweeds.
TO C. C. C.
Oh for the nights when we used to sit
In the firelight’s glow or flicker,
With the gas turned low and our pipes all lit,
And the air fast growing thicker;
When you, enthroned in the big arm-chair,
Would spin for us yarns unending,
Your voice and accent and pensive air
With the narrative subtly blending!
Oh for the bleak and wintry days
When we set our blood in motion,
Leaping the rocks below the braes
And wetting our feet in the ocean,
Or shying at marks
for moderate sums
(A penny a hit, you remember),
With aching fingers and purple thumbs,
In the merry month of December!
There is little doubt we were very daft,
And our sports, like the stakes, were trifling;
While the air of the room where we talked and laughed
Was often unpleasantly stifling.
Now we are grave and sensible men,
And wrinkles our brows embellish,
And I fear we shall never relish again
The pleasures we used to relish.
And I fear we never again shall go,
The cold and weariness scorning,
For a ten mile walk through the frozen snow
At one o’clock in the morning:
Out by Cameron,
in by the Grange,
And to bed as the moon descended . . .
To you and to me there has come a change,
And the days of our youth are ended.
ON AN EDINBURGH ADVOCATE
In youth with diligence he toiled
A Roman nose to gain,
But though a decent pug was spoiled,
A pug it did remain.
THE BANISHED BEJANT
from the unpublished remains of edgar allan poe
In the oldest of our alleys,
By good bejants tenanted,
Once a man whose name was Wallace—
William Wallace—reared his head.
Rowdy Bejant in the college
He was styled:
Never had these halls of knowledge
Welcomed waster half so wild!
Tassel blue and long and silken
From his cap did float and flow
(This was cast into the Swilcan
Two months ago);
And every gentle
air that sported
With his red gown,
Displayed a suit of clothes, reported
The most alarming in the town.
Wanderers in that ancient alley
Through his luminous window saw
Spirits come continually
From a case well packed with straw,
Just behind the chair where, sitting
With air serene,
And in a blazer loosely fitting,
The owner of the bunk was seen.
And all with cards and counters straying
Was the place littered o’er,
With which sat playing, playing, playing,
And wrangling evermore,
A group of fellows,
whose chief function
Was to proclaim,
In voices of surpassing unction,
Their luck and losses in the game.
But stately things, in robes of learning,
Discussed one day the bejant’s fate:
Ah, let us mourn him unreturning,
For they resolved to rusticate!
And now the glory he inherits,
Thus dished and doomed,
Is largely founded on the merits
Of the Old Tom consumed.
And wanderers, now, within that alley
Through the half-open shutters see,
Old crones, that talk continually
In a discordant minor key:
While, with a kind
of nervous shiver,
Past the front door,
His former set go by for ever,
But knock—or ring—no more.
NOTES
For the information of those who have not the happiness to be members of the University of St. Andrews, it may be well to explain a few terms. A bejant is an undergraduate student of the first year. In his second year he becomes a semi, in his third a tertian, and in his fourth a magistrand. The last would seem to be a gerundive form, implying that a man at the end of his fourth year ought to be made a Master of Arts; but unfortunately this does not always happen. A divine is a student in Divinity. A waster is a man of idle and (it may be) profligate habits. A grinder, on the contrary, is one who ‘grinds’ or reads with an unusual degree of application. A bunk is the lodging or abode in St. Andrews of any student. A spree is not necessarily an entertainment of rowdy character; the most decorous Professorial dinner-party would be called a spree. A solatium is a Debating Society spree, held in December or January; a gaudeamus is a festival of the same kind, only rather more ambitious, celebrated towards the close of the session. Session would be rendered in England by ‘term.’ The Competition (for Bursaries), or the ‘Comp.,’ is the examination for entrance scholarships. The cage is a curious structure of glass, iron, and wood, in which notices and examination lists are posted. The letters S. R. C. denote the Students’ Representative Council. An L.L.A. is a Lady Literate in Arts. Math. (as the discerning reader will not be slow to perceive) is an abbreviation, endearing or otherwise, of the word Mathematics. Moral stands for Moral Philosophy. Prof. is a shortened form of Professor, and certif. of certificate. Plough, pluck, and spin are used indifferently, to signify the action of an examiner in rejecting a candidate for the M.A. or any other degree. It should be mentioned that the degree of B.A. is not now conferred by the Universities of Scotland.
Page 4. Euripides: Hippolytus, 70-87.
Page 22. Odes, i. ii.
Page 52. The Town Water. The state of things described in this ballad, so far as the quality of St. Andrews water is concerned, has long since been remedied. As to the demeanour of the Bailies and Councillors, I cannot speak with the same certainty.
Page 64. Milton, a name to adorn the Cross Keys. Mr. Milton’s name is no longer associated with this time-honoured tavern, but with a new hotel.
Page 86. ΑΙΕΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΕΥΕΙΝ. The motto in the Upper Library Hall, where the ceremony of Graduation takes place.
Page 88. Catullus, ci.
Page 101. The shanty down by the shore. The St. Andrews Marine Biological Laboratory.
Page 117. This was cast into the Swilcan. The Swilcan Burn is a small stream which flows across the golfing links, and forms one of the hazards of the course.
EDINBURGH
T. & A. CONSTABLE
Printers to Her Majesty