POETRY.

THE OLD SCHOOL (Confirmation .Day, 1916.) AT school, some forty years ago, Thanks to my zeal for Greek and Latin, My place was only one below The seat the Senior Prefect sat in.

But now, upon the solemn day When childhood's vows afresh are taken, A ghost unrecognized I stray Through haunts once dear, though long forsaken.

The gruff old keeper of the gate, Whose bell has made his name immortal, Has yielded to a more ornate And genial guardian of the portal;

And masters, just and wise and strong, Long since have in the grave been lying—

We little thought the greatest wrong They were to do us was in dying.

The entry, from the road revealed,

Strikes one as positively scenic ; New houses flank the cricket field—

Impressive, massive, hygienic.

An archway links them to the lodge, High o'er the road its span uproaring, And they contain the latest dodge In sanitary engineering.

The chapel is a gorgeous fans Compared with our uncomely building ; The organ, once severely plain, Is very rich in tone—and gilding.

They give recitals, and to-day, Although I left about the middle, I heard, before I came away, Pieces by Dvoiik and S. Liddle. With ampler fare and better cheer The tuck-stalls from the field are banished Where cakes and buns and ginger-beer Daily adown our gullets vanished. Unsatisfactory perhaps They were, those mid-Victorian pedlars, But we adored their brandy-snaps, And revelled in their plums and medlars.

And yet, in spite of all the pains Bestowed on comfort and improvement, The Genius of the Place remains Unmarred by all our modem movement. Under the Downs the river creeps In hushed rebuke of human clamour ; And still the ancient Forest keeps Its dim, august, ancestral glamour.

Even the boys who briskly tread The road we trod ere science flourished,

Though giv'n a longer spell of bed,

Though better housed and better nourished, Look much the same as in the days When modern luxuries were lacking, And still pursue their several ways In boots quite innocent of blacking.

And yet they cannot be the same, For in their ears the Call is ringing ; From the old round of book and game Their thoughts to other fields are winging. And though Death lays their brothers low, Their pride is greater than their sorrow; There is not one but dares to go Hard rediturua on the morrow.

'Tis Sunday eve, yet from the Plain Big guns at intervals are booming ; Winter at last seems on the wane, Though sullen clouds above are glooming ; And heartened by this youthful host, Whose feet have never swerved or stumbled,

I lose the semblance of a ghost,—

Revivified, though strangely humbled.

Of old we mostly strove to earn A prize, a place in the Eleven ; We were not called upon to learn That " War is Hell " seven days in seven.

Tried by these sacrificial fires, Taught self-denial by their mothers, Our sons are better than their sires And worthy of their fallen brothers. G.