Behind a manner mild as mouse,
Blue-spectacled and inoffensive,
He hid a judgment and a nous
As overwhelming as extensive,
And cloaked a soul immune from wrong
Beneath an ample ong-bong-pong.
To rows of conscientious youths,
Whom 'twas his duty to take care of,
He loved to prove the truth of truths
Which they already were aware of;
They learnt to look politely bored,
Where modern students would have snored.
To show that Two and Two make Four,
That All is greater than a Portion,
Requires no dialectic lore,
Nor any cerebral contortion;
The public's faith in facts was steady,
Before the days of Mrs. Eddy.
But what was hard to overlook
(From which Society still suffers)
Was all the trouble Euclid took
To teach the game of Bridge to duffers.
Insisting, when he got a quorum,
On "Pons" (he called it) "Asinorum."
The guileless methods of his game
Provoked his partner's strongest strictures;
He hardly knew the cards by name,
But realised that some had pictures;
Exhausting ev'rybody's patience
By his perpetual revocations.
For weary hours, in deep concern,
O'er dummy's hand he loved to linger,
Denoting ev'ry card in turn,
With timid indecisive finger;
And stopped to say, at each delay,
"I really don't know what to play!"
He sought, at any cost, to win
His ev'ry suit in turn unguarding;
He trumped his partner's "best card in,"
His own egregiously discarding;
Remarking sadly, when in doubt,
"I quite forgot the King was out!"
Alert opponents always knew,
By what the look upon his face was,
When safety lay in leading through,
And where, of course, the fatal ace was;
Assuring the complete successes
Of bold but hazardous "finesses."
But nowadays we find no trace,
From distant Assouan to Cairo,
To mark the place where dwelt a race
Mistaught by so absurd a tyro;
And nothing but occult inscriptions
Recall the sports of past Egyptians.
Yes, "autre temps" and "autre moeurs,"
"Où sont indeed les neiges d'antan?"
The modern native much prefers
Debauching in some café chantant,
Nor ever shows the least ambition
To solve a single Proposition.