Infinitely freely exact!--
As the fragrance of fiction is fairest
If frayed in the furnace of fact--
Though nine be the Muses in number
There is hope if the handbook be one,--
Dispelling the planets that cumber
The path of the sun.

Though crimson thy hands and thy hood be
With the blood of a brother betrayed,
O Would-be-Professor of Would-be,
We call thee to bless and to aid.
Transmuted would travel with Er, see
The Land of the Rolling of Logs,
Charmed, chained to thy side, as to Circe
The Ithacan hogs.

O bourne of the black and the godly!
O land where the good niggers go.
With the books that are borrowed of Bodley,
Old moons and our castaway clo'!
There, there, till the roses be ripened
Rebuke us, revile, and review,
Then take thee thine annual stipend
So long over-due.

[1] Suggested by an Article in the _Quarterly Review_, enforcing the
unity of literature ancient and modern, and the necessity of
providing a new School of Literature in Oxford.