My scanty page could ne'er contain Of works the long and learned list By which it was their plan to train The sucking agriculturist: In brief, the arts of tilling land Sufficiently imparted were By great Professor Ellis, and By great Professor Bywater.
One taught th' aspiring candidate In Hesiod each alternate day: One showed him how the crops rotate From Cato De Re Rustica: The bee that in our bonnets lurks He taught to yield its honied store By reading Columella's works And also Virgil (Georgic Four).
Yet not by Theory alone Did learning train the student mind-- Its exercise was carried on In places properly assigned: From toil by weather undeterred In winter wild or burning June, The precepts in the morning heard They practised in the afternoon.
The Colleges, whose grassy plots Are now resorts of vicious ease, Were then laid out in little lots, With useful beans and early peas: Each merely ornamental sod They dug with spades and hoed with hoes: The wilderness in every quad Was made to blossom as the rose.
The gardens too, with cereals decked, Where tennis-courts no longer were, Showed Agriculture's due effect Upon the student's character: No more by practices beguiled Which Virtue with displeasure notes, No longer dissolute and wild, He sowed domesticated oats.
It was indeed a blissful state: For Convocation's high decree Dubbed the successful candidate Magister Agriculturae: And if he failed, his vows denied, The world observed without surprise That those who learnt the plough to guide Were objects of its exercise!
Now Spring bedecks with nascent green The meadows near and far, And Sabbath calm pervades the scene, And Sabbath punts the Cher.: While I, like trees new drest by June, Must bow to Fashion's law, And wear on Sunday afternoon A variegated Straw.
My Topper! so serenely sleek, So beautifully tall, Wherein I decked me once a week Whene'er I went to call,-- No more shall now th' admiring maid, While handing me my tea, View her reflected charms displayed (Narcissus-like) in thee!
Yet oh! though different forms of hat May wreathe my manly brow, No Straw shall e'er (be sure of that) Be half so dear as thou. Hang then upon thy native rack As varying modes compel, Till next year's fashions bring thee back, My Chimneypot, farewell!