In winter wild or burning June,
The precepts in the morning heard
They practised in the afternoon.

The Colleges, whose grassy plots
Are now resorts of vicious ease,
Were then laid out in little lots,
With useful beans and early peas:
Each merely ornamental sod
They dug with spades and hoed with hoes:
The wilderness in every quad
Was made to blossom as the rose.

The gardens too, with cereals decked,
Where tennis-courts no longer were,
Showed Agriculture's due effect
Upon the student's character:
No more by practices beguiled
Which Virtue with displeasure notes,
No longer dissolute and wild,
He sowed domesticated oats.

It was indeed a blissful state:
For Convocation's high decree
Dubbed the successful candidate
Magister Agriculturae:
And if he failed, his vows denied,
The world observed without surprise
That those who learnt the plough to guide
Were objects of its exercise!