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.
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem reads like a lament for a changing Oxford, a place once ruled by the leisurely and intellectual pursuits of philosophy, literature, and debate, now overtaken by military training and war preparation. The shift from the “Toga” to “arms” in the opening lines immediately sets up the contrast between the world of scholarship and the world of war. The toga, a symbol of the classical education and rhetoric associated with figures like Cicero (“Tully”), is being abandoned as military culture takes over.
The central figure in the poem is Athena’s owl, a long-standing symbol of wisdom and learning. Oxford, traditionally a home for this owl, is no longer the same place. Instead of the academic calm that once ruled its halls, a warlike atmosphere has taken hold. The owl’s distress is almost comic at first—she calls out to her absent students, imagining them still in bed, still lost in their comfortable morning routines of coffee, marmalade, and casual strolls. But the dream is already broken. She realizes that Oxford’s young men, previously content to waste away the day in scholarly indolence, are no longer there.
The poem plays with humor and irony, but there’s a deeper unease beneath it. The shift from peace to war isn’t just a practical change—it feels like a loss of identity. The owl, representing Oxford’s old intellectual spirit, tries to hold on to what remains, but she’s ignored. The students, once immersed in philosophy and history, are now focused on learning military tactics and preparing for battle. There’s something unsettling about the image of young men who once studied ancient wars now preparing to fight in a real one.
The poem’s tone shifts from light satire to something more desperate. The owl, at first merely bewildered, becomes frantic when she reaches the university parks and finds them filled with soldiers instead of students. She searches for even a trace of the old Oxford among them but finds nothing. These aren’t scholars playing at war—they are “eaglets,” young soldiers in training, already transformed. Even their faces bear the marks of change, with mustaches growing in like warlike plumage.
The final moment, where the owl realizes that her nightmare is real, is one of total defeat. She flies away, her cry mournful. The transformation is complete. Oxford, once a place where learning reigned supreme, has been absorbed into the machinery of war. The wistfulness and satire in the early stanzas have given way to a much heavier reality: the old ways are gone, and the university has been reshaped by forces far beyond its control.