Dedicatory Ode

I mean to write with all my strength(It lately has been sadly waning),A ballad of enormous length--Some parts of which will need explaining.

Because (unlike the bulk of menWho write for fame or public ends),I turn a lax and fluent penTo talking of my private friends.

For no one, in our long decline,So dusty, spiteful and divided,Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,Or loved them half as much as I did.

The Freshman ambles down the High,In love with everything he sees,He notes the racing autumn sky.He sniffs a lively autumn breeze.

“Can this be Oxford? This the place?”(He cries) “of which my father saidThe tutoring was a damned disgrace,The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead?

“Can it be here that Uncle PaulWas driven by excessive gloom,To drink and debt, and, last of all,To smoking opium in his room?

“Is it from here the people come,Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes,And stammer? How extremely rum!How curious! What a great surprise.

“Some influence of a nobler dayThan theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul’s),Has roused the sleep of their decay,And flecked with life their crumbling walls.

“O! dear undaunted boys of old,Would that your names were carven here,For all the world in stamps of gold,That I might read them and revere.

“Who wrought and handed down for meThis Oxford of the larger air,Laughing, and full of faith, and free,With youth resplendent everywhere?”

Then learn: thou ill-instructed, blind,Young, callow, and untutored man,Their private names were....Their club was called REPUBLICAN.

Where on their banks of light they lie,The happy hills of Heaven between,The Gods that rule the morning skyAre not more young, nor more serene

Than were the intrepid Four that stand,The first who dared to live their dream.And on this uncongenial landTo found the Abbey of Theleme.

We kept the Rabelaisian plan:We dignified the dainty cloistersWith Natural Law, the Rights of Man,Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters.

The library was most inviting:The books upon the crowded shelvesWere mainly of our private writing:We kept a school and taught ourselves.

We taught the art of writing thingsOn men we still should like to throttle:And where to get the Blood of KingsAt only half a crown a bottle.

Eheu Fugaces! Postume!(An old quotation out of mode);My coat of dreams is stolen awayMy youth is passing down the road.

The wealth of youth, we spent it wellAnd decently, as very few can.And is it lost? I cannot tell:And what is more, I doubt if you can.

The question’s very much too wide,And much too deep, and much too hollow,And learned men on either sideUse arguments I cannot follow.

They say that in the unchanging place,Where all we loved is always dear,We meet our morning face to faceAnd find at last our twentieth year....

They say (and I am glad they say)It is so; and it may be so:It may be just the other way,I cannot tell. But this I know:

From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends.

But something dwindles, oh! my peers,And something cheats the heart and passes,And Tom that meant to shake the yearsHas come to merely rattling glasses.

And He, the Father of the Flock,Is keeping Burmesans in order,An exile on a lonely rockThat overlooks the Chinese border.

And One (Myself I mean--no less),Ah!--will Posterity believe it--Not only don’t deserve success,But hasn’t managed to achieve it.

Not even this peculiar townHas ever fixed a friendship firmer,But--one is married, one’s gone down,And one’s a Don, and one’s in Burmah.

And oh! the days, the days, the days,When all the four were off together:The infinite deep of summer haze,The roaring boast of autumn weather!

I will not try the reach again,I will not set my sail alone,To moor a boat bereft of menAt Yarnton’s tiny docks of stone.

But I will sit beside the fire,And put my hand before my eyes,And trace, to fill my heart’s desire,The last of all our Odysseys.

The quiet evening kept her tryst:Beneath an open sky we rode,And passed into a wandering mistAlong the perfect Evenlode.

The tender Evenlode that makesHer meadows hush to hear the soundOf waters mingling in the brakes,And binds my heart to English ground.

A lovely river, all alone,She lingers in the hills and holdsA hundred little towns of stone,Forgotten in the western wolds.

I dare to think (though meaner powersPossess our thrones, and lesser witsAre drinking worser wine than ours,In what’s no longer Austerlitz)

That surely a tremendous ghost,The brazen-lunged, the bumper-filler,Still sings to an immortal toast,The Misadventures of the Miller.

The unending seas are hardly barTo men with such a prepossession:We were? Why then, by God, we are--Order! I call the Club to session!

You do retain the song we set,And how it rises, trips and scans?You keep the sacred memory yet,Republicans? Republicans?

You know the way the words were hurled,To break the worst of fortune’s rub?I give the toast across the world,And drink it, “Gentlemen: the Club.”