‘the Owl Abash’d’or The Present Estate Of Oxford Poem by Arthur Graeme West

Meanwhile the Toga (Tully’s phrase forgot)
Makes way for arms; the muses hover not
As they were wont o’er Oxford’s day and night
With calm userpance and self-conscious right:
Athene’s Owl once held prescriptive roost
In every Hall and College, and was used
With academic hoot to calm abode
From Eastern Iffley up to Southmoor Road:
The great War-eagle, subject of her ban,
Was weaken’d to a mild ey’d Pelican,
Peck’d his own breast, and dropp’d a joyful tear
When heroes compass’d fifteen Drills a year!
But now the sapient Fowl, with staring eyes
And loud ‘tu-whoo,’ upraids th’ unlistening skies:
To Pallas’ shoulder flies she, there to stand —
Mail’d is the shoulder, gauntleted the hand.
She drops abash’d, and wings along The High,
Calling to her brood with supplicating cry: —
“Come, come, my Owlets, as in former days,
Ye undergraduates and proud B.A.’s
Hear Carfax chime, nine hours of day are sped!
Why come ye not? — Of course, they’re all abed!”
Reliev’d she sigh’d, and seem’d to hear their snores,
To hear scouts hammering at a thousand doors,
To know those waking dreams of shadow’d pools,
Punts, girls, Eights, waistcoats, Proctors, dogs and Schools;
She seems to see the breakfast-table laid,
To scent the coffee and the marmelade,
His social song the genial kettle trolls,
To eggs and bacon warm before the coals,
A morning paper, decently inane,
Lies by the plate, to soothe the waken’d brain
Blest by such unobtrusive servile art
The days of comfort comfortably start.
“And yet I dreamt,” the shuddering creature said,
“My bowers were rifled and my children were fled;
The Heavens disdain’d me; Pallas’ self was cold,
Yet, when Mars ogled her, she did not scold;
With din of arms rang all th’ ethereal clime,
And tramp of deities a-marking time!
Yes, ’twas a nightmare; ah, peace-loving men,
That rise at nine and walk The High at ten,
To flaunt your socks or buy a straight-grained briar,
Then back to doze, with Livy, by the fire,
Here none need quake, where Sleep embraces all,
At shadow-armies, marching on the wall;
To fretted minds, untun’d by Life’s debate,
Ye are, indeed, a draught mandragorate!”
Thus far the Owl; then gently bends her flight
Where streaks of Keble vivify the sight;
Keble that rose, as Venus from the main,
In foamy spumings of a monstrous brain.
She reach’d the Parks; but what a sight was there!
Her swooning weight scarce can her pinions bear.
These peaceful Parks, where chattering nursemaids talk,
Where mail-carts flock, like Kensington’s Broad Walk,
Where, until now, Dons’ babies stumbling ran,
And consecrated all to Peter Pan —
Bristle with horrid arms, converted thus
From field of Peace to Campus Martius.
She scann’d this host of lithe, brown-feather’d fowl
For something with a likeness to an owl;
But there was none; she knew them eaglets all
Of her unmindful, heedless of her call.
In charge of sections or platoons they rant
Those previous souls before immersed in Kant;
Those who taught Pompey how to play his cards
Hope soon to fight their ‘Cæsar’ in the Guards.
Forlorn she sees the warlike feathers’ tips
In act of sprouting on the upper lips.
“Undone,” she shriek’d, “my nightmare all too true!”
Then off she flapp’d, with dismal “tu-whoo-whoo.