I would have everybody rustication mad

I would that safe advantages were cause for rags

Houseless itinerants addressed as Oxford grads

With lavish fancy restaurant tables tabbed

Oh, how a comrade might declare: Ah, you, you’re such a wag!

I wish him all philanthropy, whose income overpools,

High piled and stacked to sides, in ready bullion;

A monster truck of luxuries of sheer outright vermillion

To gift to sorry waifs cooped in life’s vestibules

Let summer days’ meridians please a world away

From low affairs in cabinetted rooms

Where bets are laid which bare drear punters’ dreams precisely

Button their hopes for

A scoop beyond the smart no-win-no-fee arrangement;

Nor consciousness for any Rousseau’s gorgeous thought

Declares these slackers; horses being their sport

The sport of kings, bookmaker wins, and losers rendered nought

Bathe maudlin lowly brains among their liquid suppers;

Such men are extant now, now falls their ace

Turned from the pack; provides no Grantchesters,

Only misfortunes rack,

Unveils the common lot unkempt, dishevelled:

The Sphinx in dying groans expires, found out its riddle,

By daily immolation on an ingénue’s paper sun

Some men exempt, the labourers of learning,

Receive some men no givens, as requisite to presume

Entitlement with Henry into Tattersall’s

Cleaned out of ponderables at playing heads or tails

(Though tradesman’s-doored are some men by their consonants)

A welcome entry beckoning brings in august in coattails

Whose indolence double-booked proclaims in spades

Amidst these scenes might Samson’s plight emerge

A moderator, that Samaritan,

A man not blithesome crossed to the other side,

A Daniel

A Daniel come to judgement, as Pantocrator,

In action, admirable, like an angel

In apprehension, paragon, how like a god

The beauty of the world, Emmanuel:

What say you?