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The Spike or Victoria College Review, October 1903

The Undergraduate

page 37

The Undergraduate.

The session past, around the student flies
To lubricate the muscles of his eyes;
Joining his old associates, fondly found,
With them resumes the old uproarious round.
Abandoned now for sport's benign intent
His classic lore, to airy regions sent,
Unheeded 'scapes the dungeons of his brain,
And leaves him quite as ignorantly vain
As when unbroached and grim before him lay
Those ponderous tomes through which to plough his way
Towards that shadowy goal yeleptéd Fame—
The transient exaltation of a name.
One woeful day he worries o'er results;
Once more his scribbled pocketbook consults
To prove beyond all doubt that chances few
Attend his hopes of even scraping through,
Then flings fond expectation to the winds
And in his own domains elation finds.
Who late has laboured in poetic diction
Now wallows nightly in unholy fiction,
Thus bringing welcome respite to a brain
Long tossed upon the scientific main.
He seeks the sultry sands that strew the shore
And ponders while the tumid breakers roar.
He seeks the woods that gird the fertile fields
And o'er the stream the supple angle wields.
On velvet lawns at tennis he will vie
To catch the budding virgin's liquid eye.
With fellow-students cycles o'er the land
And makes the gaping rustic stop and stand.
Slight are his cares with studies laid aside,
And now the dusty shelf he can deride
Whereon, close packed and piled for reach too high,
His "loads of learned lumber" latent lie.
Sweet is the summer, sweet the waning spring
When nature breeds her bliss in everything,
But when brown autumn's mellowing leaves appear,
Comes the long-dreaded tidings of the year
Borne o'er the boundless seas with lightning pace
To tell of exaltation or disgrace.
'Tis then he'll laugh aloud, but inward pine
And drown his troubles in the generous vine.
The smug passee he meets at every turn,
(Though few rejoice whereas the many yearn)

page 38

Ubiquity occasioned, one might guess,
To hear the quailing query and say "Yes."
Though this with modesty, th' observer sees
The flood-tide of suppressed felicities
O'erwhelming that successful candidate,
And, chagrined, holds the harmless "swat" in hate.
Another year of drudgery in store,
Another ramble on the rocky shore
That girds th' immortal isle of classic lore
Then one last blind attack on that Exam.,
Protesting 'tis a case of craven cram
The event of which he does not care a dam.*
The luckless laggard lounges to his seat,
His information fastened in his feet.
Th' officious supervisor strolls around
And to his steps the silent halls resound.
With cornered eye the candidates he views,
And with his glances consternation brews.
The youth a moment on the paper glares,
Then feels the elevation of his hairs,
For in the dozen questions there's not one
On which he is decided how 'tis done.
A sad fiasco, yet a minor fear
To the horrors he'll experience next year
When failure's spectred form shall reappear.