The Humourous Poetry of the English Language

583
EPIGRAMS OF BARHAM.
ON THE WINDOWS OF KING'S COLLEGE REMAINING BOARDED.
Loquitur Discipulus Esuriens.
Professors, in your plan there seems
A something not quite right:
'Tis queer to cherish learning's beams
By shutting out the light.
While thus we see your windows block'd,
If nobody complains;
Yet everybody must be shock'd,
To see you don't take pains.
And tell me why should bodily
Succumb to mental meat?
Or why should Pi-ra, Beta Pi-ra, Pi-c,
Be all the pie we eat?
No HELLUO LIBRORUM I,
No literary glutton,
Would veal with Virgil like to try,
With metaphysics, mutton.
Leave us no longer in the lurch,
With Romans, Greeks, and Hindoos:
But give us beef instead of birch,
And BOARD US--not your windows.
NEW-MADE HONOR.
[IMITATED FROM MARTIAL.]
A friend I met, some half hour since--
"GOOD-MORROW JACK!" quoth I;
The new-made Knight, like any Prince,
Frown'd, nodded, and pass'd by;