Lines To An Old Friend

When we're daily called to arms by continual alarms, And the journalist unceasingly dilates On the agitating fact that we're soon to be attacked By the Germans, or the Russians, or the States: When the papers all are swelling with a patriotic rage, And are hurling a defiance or a threat, Then I cool my martial ardour with the pacifying page Of the Oxford University Gazette.

When I hanker for a statement that is practical and dry (Being sated with sensation in excess, With the vespertinal rumour and the matutinal lie Which adorn the lucubrations of the Press), Then I turn me to the columns where there's nothing to attract, Or the interest to waken and to whet, And I revel in a banquet of unmitigated fact In the Oxford University Gazette.

When the Laureate obedient to an editor's decree Puts his verses in the columns of the Times; When the endless minor poet in an endless minor key Gives the public his unnecessary rhymes, When you're weary of the poems which they constantly compose, And endeavour their existence to forget, You may seek and find repose in the satisfying prose Of the Oxford University Gazette.

In that soporific journal you may stupefy the mind With the influence narcotic which it draws From the Latest Information about Scholarships Combined Or the contemplated changes in a clause: Place me somewhere that is far from the Standard and the Star, From the fever and the literary fret,-- And the harassed spirit's balm be the academic calm Of the Oxford University Gazette!