On pinnacled St. Mary’s
Lingers the setting sun;
Into the street the blackguards
Are skulking one by one:
Butcher and Boots and Bargeman
Lay pipe and pewter down;
And with wild shout come tumbling out
To join the Town and Gown.
And now the undergraduates
Come forth by twos and threes,
From the broad tower of Trinity,
From the green gate of Caius:
The wily bargeman marks them,
And swears to do his worst;
To turn to impotence their strength,
And their beauty to my first.
But before Corpus gateway
My second first arose,
When Barnacles the freshman
Was pinned upon the nose:
Pinned on the nose by Boxer,
Who brought a hobnailed herd
From Barnwell, where he kept a van,
Being indeed a dogsmeat man,
Vendor of terriers, blue or tan,
And dealer in my third.
’Twere long to tell how Boxer
Was ‘countered’ on the cheek,
And knocked into the middle
Of the ensuing week:
How Barnacles the Freshman
Was asked his name and college;
And how he did the fatal facts
Reluctantly acknowledge.
He called upon the Proctor
Next day at half-past ten;
Men whispered that the Freshman cut
A different figure then:—
That the brass forsook his forehead,
The iron fled his soul,
As with blanched lip and visage wan
Before the stony-hearted Don
He kneeled upon my whole.
Sikes, housebreaker, of Houndsditch,
Habitually swore;
But so surpassingly profane
He never was before,
As on a night in winter,
When—softly as he stole
In the dim light from stair to stair,
Noiseless as boys who in her lair
Seek to surprise a fat old hare—
He barked his shinbone, unaware
Encountering my whole.
As pours the Anio plainward,
When rains have swollen the dykes,
So, with such noise, poured down my first,
Stirred by the shins of Sikes.
The Butler Bibulus heard it;
And straightway ceased to snore,
And sat up, like an egg on end,
While men might count a score:
Then spake he to Tigerius,
A Buttons bold was he:
“Buttons, I think there’s thieves about;
Just strike a light and tumble out;
If you can’t find one, go without,
And see what you may see.”
But now was all the household,
Almost, upon its legs,
Each treading carefully about
As if they trod on eggs.
With robe far-streaming issued
Paterfamilias forth;
And close behind him,—stout and true
And tender as the North,—
Came Mrs. P., supporting
On her broad arm her fourth.