The Waster

From the date that the doors of his prep-school close     On the lonely little son     He is taught by precept, insult, and blows     The Things that Are Never Done.     Year after year, without favour or fear,     From seven to twenty-two,     His keepers insist he shall learn the list     Of the things no fellow can do.     (They are not so strict with the average Pict     And it isnt set to, etc.)     For this and not for the profit it brings     Or the good of his fellow-kind     He is and suffers unspeakable things     In body and soul and mind.     But the net result of that Primitive Cult,     Whatever else may be won,     Is definite knowledge ere leaving College     Of the Things that Are Never Done.     (An interdict which is strange to the Pict     And was never revealed to, etc.)     Slack by training and slow by birth,     Only quick to despise,     Largely assessing his neighbours worth     By the hue of his socks or ties,     A loafer-in-grain, his foes maintain,     And how shall we combat their view     When, atop of his natural sloth, he holds     There are Things no Fellow can do?     (Which is why he is licked from the first by the Pict     And left at the post by, etc.)