Classic Poem

Me, for the Oxford and the Cambridge Board
Awarding marks, a far from cheerful game,
To Brecon, Bromsgrove, Southwold, Surbiton,
And Ystrad Meurig, well-remembered name!
Me, labouring thus, in summers long agone,
To swell my scanty hoard,
This hope would solace — " All things have an end:
In time (methought) a train with me inside
From dusty Dijon and its champaign wide
To Jura's heights will crawlingly ascend:

" Then shall I haply in a dawn divine
Drink coffee at Pontarlier, or some
Such favoured spot, 'mid uplands drenched with dew":
(B LEST be Lord Haldane's Spiritual Home
And Kaiser Wilhelm and his Junker crew
From Krupp to Falkenhayn!)
" And subsequently shall my breakfast make
On cates Helvetian, which immortals eat,
Surveying from my elevated seat
The lucent levels of Lemanus' lake."

Such thoughts could cheer me: also how that I,
All in the fullness of accomplished days,
From Visp or Sion or perchance from Sierre
Would climb the valley's unforgotten ways,
And taste the fragrance of a purer air,
And presently espy,
Guarding the gate of some Valaisian pass,
The gleaming peak, the glacier seen afar,
Rising above the pine-woods (D AMN ALL War ) —
The cliffs of Collon or the snows of Saas ...

Of suchlike stuff my memories consist:
Of occupations and of countries flat
Piget , it irks me: and I do confess
That, if it took me frequently like that,
I should at last be neither more nor less
Than a Pacificist,
A craven void of principle and pith.
Excuse my weakness: Feci — I have done —
It isn't chronic. . . . My Reports upon
Such Schools as need them are enclosed herewith.