The End Of April

This is the time when larks are singing loud          And higher still ascending and more high,     This is the time when many a fleecy cloud          Runs lamb-like on the pastures of the sky,     This is the time when most I love to lie          Stretched on the links, now listening to the sea,     Now looking at the train that dawdles by;          But James is going in for his degree.     James is my brother.    He has twice been ploughed,          Yet he intends to have another shy,     Hoping to pass (as he says) in a crowd.          Sanguine is James, but not so sanguine I.      If you demand my reason, I reply:          Because he reads no Greek without a key     And spells Thucydides c-i-d-y;          Yet James is going in for his degree.     No doubt, if the authorities allowed          The taking in of Bohns, he might defy     The stiffest paper that has ever cowed          A timid candidate and made him fly.     Without such aids, he all as well may try          To cultivate the people of Dundee,     Or lead the camel through the needle's eye;          Yet James is going in for his degree.     Vain are the efforts hapless mortals ply          To climb of knowledge the forbidden tree;     Yet still about its roots they strive and cry,          And James is going in for his degree.