OR, BYRON UP TO DATE.
(A British Boy's View on a Burning Question.)
Compulsory Greek! Compulsory Greek!
Though "burning SAPPHO loved and sung,"
Why in Greek shackles should they seek
To bind the British schoolboy's tongue?
Eternal bores, that Attic set,
But, heaven be thanked, we'll "chuck" them yet.
"The Scian and the Teian Muse"
Ruled us as tyrants absolute;
Now even pedagogues refuse
To stodge us with such stale old fruit.
Why should the STANLEY-dowered West
Make the Anabasis a test?
They teach us about Marathon,
But what is Marathon to me?
Tell me of fights still going on,
Men "rightly struggling to be free;"
Nay, I find interest much more brave in
The mill 'twixt Thingummy and SLAVIN.
Oh, feed me not on mythic lore,
But Science and the modern Fact,
Teach me Electric Fires to store,
The difference 'twixt "Bill" and "Act."
Why should a Cockney care a "cuss"
For HOMER or for ÆSCHYLUS?
For who are they? But what art thou,
My Country? On thy fertile shore
The heroic lyre is tuneless now;
To scheme for dividends, dig for ore,
These are the things we hold divine,
Not HOMER's long-resounding line.
If you would make a splendid name
Amidst a lucre-loving race,
You must be in god Mammon's game,
And hustle for a foremost place.
What do we want with poets here?
For Greece a snub, for Greek a sneer!
Must we still pore o'er classic text
Because our simple fathers said
It made "a gentleman"? What next?
Let the dead languages stay dead!
Hooray for Fact and Rule of Three!
Compulsory Greek is fiddle-de-dee.
Place me on Stock Exchange's steep
With nought to do but sell and buy
To Bull and Bear we need not keep
Our classics up; that's all my eye.
Ho! for the Factory, Mart, and Mine
The toils of Greek our souls decline.
