The poetical works of John Godfrey Saxe :: :: University of Virginia Library

'T is twenty years, and something more,
Since, all athirst for useful knowledge,
I took some draughts of classic lore,
Drawn very mild, at ---rd College;
Yet I remember all that one
Could wish to hold in recollection;
The boys, the joys, the noise, the fun;
But not a single Conic Section.

I recollect those harsh affairs,
The morning bells that gave us panics;
I recollect the formal prayers,
That seemed like lessons in Mechanics;
I recollect the drowsy way
In which the students listened to them,
As clearly, in my wig, to-day,
As when, a boy, I slumbered through them.

I recollect the tutors all
As freshly now, if I may say so,
As any chapter I recall
In Homer or Ovidius Naso.
I recollect, extremely well,
“Old Hugh,” the mildest of fanatics;
I well remember Matthew Bell,
But very faintly, Mathematics.

I recollect the prizes paid
For lessons rathomed to the bottom;
(Alas that pencil-marks should fade!)
I recollect the chaps who got 'em,—
The light equestrians who soared
O'er every passage reckoned stony;
And took the chalks,—but never scored
A single honor to the pony!

Ah me! what changes Time has wrought,
And how predictions have miscarried!
A few have reached the goal they sought,
And some are dead, and some are married!
And some in city journals war;
And some as politicians bicker;
And some are pleading at the bar—
For jury-verdicts, or for liquor!

And some on Trade and Commerce wait;
And some in schools with dunces battle;
And some the Gospel propagate;
And some the choicest breeds of cattle;
And some are living at their ease;
And some were wrecked in “the revulsion”;
Some served the State for handsome fees,
And one, I hear, upon compulsion!

Lamont, who, in his college days,
Thought e'en a cross a moral scandal,
Has left his Puritanic ways,
And worships now with bell and candle;
And Mann, who mourned the negro's fate,
And held the slave as most unlucky,
Now holds him, at the market rate,
On a plantation in Kentucky!

Tom Knox—who swore in such a tone
It fairly might be doubted whether
It really was himself alone,
Or Knox and Erebus together—
Has grown a very altered man,
And, changing oaths for mild entreaty,
Now recommends the Christian plan
To savages in Otaheite!

Alas for young ambition's vow!
How envious Fate may overthrow it!—
Poor Harvey is in Congress now,
Who struggled long to be a poet;
Smith carves (quite well) memorial stones,
Who tried in vain to make the law go;
Hall deals in hides; and “Pious Jones”
Is dealing faro in Chicago!

And, sadder still, the brilliant Hays,
Once honest, manly, and ambitious,
Has taken latterly to ways
Extremely profligate and vicious;
By slow degrees—I can't tell how—
He 's reached at last the very groundsel,
And in New York he figures now,
A member of the Common Council!