Classic Poem

Eheu! fugaces, Postume, Postume

I hinted in my postumous, or last,
Ode that the flight of years is never-ending;
I find it is a state of things that's past
Serious mending;

The more I think of it, the more I feel
One cannot do much better than repeat it;
The Truth is always fresh, and takes a deal
Of talk to beat it.

Behold, you may detect a shiny spot,
Where through my hair the pericranium twinkles;
I, too, observe upon your brow a lot
Of seamy wrinkles,

Signs of the crammer's art. For you and me
The hour is come to join the dear departed;
To phrase it coarsely, it is time that we
Already started.

" There is no way but this! " as Lord Macaulay's
Hero remarked, and drove the " whittle " home,
In one of those exceptionally raw lays
Of Ancient Rome.

But steady on the rein, my Muse! sit tight!
Five desultory stanzas fairly smother
One of old Flaccus! Even as I write
This makes another.

All flesh eventually takes to grass,
Browsing on Stygian plains, or else they row to
Those blessed islands which the better class
Of niggers go to.

Not though you worked your eyes completely red,
Thomas, and raised an astigmatic blister;
Not though you met the Dean point-blank and said
She was your sister;

Not though you gave a yearly butt of rum
To flush the Fellows' Combination table,
Or penned a treatise lithe and long as some
Atlantic cable,

Could you escape to go where went the late
Apostles, apt to sweeten, apt to light us,
Profusely punting down the desperate
Pool of Cocytus.

Which is to say that we must e'en go down,
With dignity, of course, not cut and run it;
You'll find a heap of decent men in town
Who've been and done it.

So shall you leave your rooms, your bills, your buxom
Bedder, yea, all on which the fancy dotes,
Reaping no harvest save, by cursed luck, some
Crop of wild oats.

A better man than you, a nobler flier,
The pavement of your court shall rudely stain,
Playing at Heidsieck on a higher, drier,
Plan of Champagne.