This is the time when larks are singing loud <br />And higher still ascending and more high, <br />This is the time when many a fleecy cloud <br />Runs lamb-like on the pastures of the sky, <br />This is the time when most I love to lie <br />Stretched on the links, now listening to the sea, <br />Now looking at the train that dawdles by; <br />But James is going in for his degree. <br /> <br />James is my brother. He has twice been ploughed, <br />Yet he intends to have another shy, <br />Hoping to pass (as he says) in a crowd. <br />Sanguine is James, but not so sanguine I. <br />If you demand my reason, I reply: <br />Because he reads no Greek without a key <br />And spells Thucydides c-i-d-y; <br />Yet James is going in for his degree. <br /> <br />No doubt, if the authorities allowed <br />The taking in of Bohns, he might defy <br />The stiffest paper that has ever cowed <br />A timid candidate and made him fly. <br />Without such aids, he all as well may try <br />To cultivate the people of Dundee, <br />Or lead the camel through the needle's eye; <br />Yet James is going in for his degree. <br /> <br />Vain are the efforts hapless mortals ply <br />To climb of knowledge the forbidden tree; <br />Yet still about its roots they strive and cry, <br />And James is going in for his degree.<br /><br />Robert Fuller Murray<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-end-of-april/
