'Behold! I Am Not One That Goes to Lectures'

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Title:     'Behold! I Am Not One That Goes to Lectures'
Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch [More Titles by Quiller-Couch]

By W. W.

Behold! I am not one that goes to Lectures or the pow-wow of Professors.

The elementary laws never apologise: neither do I apologise.

I find letters from the Dean dropt on my table--and every one is signed by the Dean's name--

And I leave them where they are; for I know that as long as I stay up

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

I am one who goes to the river,

I sit in the boat and think of 'life' and of 'time.'

How life is much, but time is more; and the beginning is everything,

But the end is something.

I loll in the Parks, I go to the wicket, I swipe.

I see twenty-two young men from Foster's watching me, and the trousers of the twenty-two young men,

I see the Balliol men _en masse_ watching me.--The Hottentot that loves his mother, the untutored Bedowee, the Cave-man that wears only his certificate of baptism, and the shaggy Sioux that hangs his testamur with his scalps.

I see the Don who ploughed me in Rudiments watching me: and the wife of the Don who ploughed me in Rudiments watching me.

I see the rapport of the wicket-keeper and umpire. I cannot see that I am out.

Oh! you Umpires!

I am not one who greatly cares for experience, soap, bull-dogs, cautions, majorities, or a graduated Income-Tax,

The certainty of space, punctuation, sexes, institutions, copiousness, degrees, committees, delicatesse, or the fetters of rhyme--

For none of these do I care: but least for the fetters of rhyme.

Myself only I sing. Me Imperturbe! Me Prononce!

Me progressive and the depth of me progressive,

And the bathos, Anglice bathos

Of me chanting to the Public the song of Simple Enumeration.

[The end]
Arthur Quiller-Couch's Poem: 'Behold! I Am Not One That Goes to Lectures't

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