Behold! I am not one that goes to Lectures or the pow-wow of <br />Professors. <br />The elementary laws never apologise: neither do I apologise. <br />I find letters from the Dean dropt on my table—and every one is <br />signed by the Dean's name— <br />And I leave them where they are; for I know that as long as I <br />stay up <br />Others will punctually come for ever and ever. <br />I am one who goes to the river, <br />I sit in the boat and think of 'life' and of 'time.' <br />How life is much, but time is more; and the beginning is <br />everything, <br />But the end is something. <br />I loll in the Parks, I go to the wicket, I swipe. <br />I see twenty-two young men from Foster's watching me, and the <br />trousers of the twenty-two young men, <br />I see the Balliol men en masse watching me.—The Hottentot <br />that loves his mother, the untutored Bedowee, the Cave-man <br />that wears only his certificate of baptism, and the shaggy <br />Sioux that hangs his testamur with his scalps. <br />I see the Don who ploughed me in Rudiments watching me: and the <br />wife of the Don who ploughed me in Rudiments watching me. <br />I see the rapport of the wicket-keeper and umpire. I cannot see <br />that I am out. <br />Oh! you Umpires! <br />I am not one who greatly cares for experience, soap, bull-dogs, <br />cautions, majorities, or a graduated Income-Tax, <br />The certainty of space, punctuation, sexes, institutions, <br />copiousness, degrees, committees, delicatesse, or the <br />fetters of rhyme— <br />For none of these do I care: but least for the fetters of rhyme. <br />Myself only I sing. Me Imperturbe! Me Prononce! <br />Me progressive and the depth of me progressive, <br />And the bathos, Anglice bathos <br />Of me chanting to the Public the song of Simple Enumeration.<br /><br />Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/behold-i-am-not-one-that-goes-to-lectures/
