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OLD HELTBERG 151
The self-same books, the same so-called education
My comrades devoured; but my appetite failed me,
And that fare I refused, till, to cure what had ailed me,
Home leaving I leaped o’er those bars of vexation.
What I met on the journey, what I thought in each case,
What arose in my soul in the new-chosen place,
Where the future was lying,—this to tell is refractory,
But I’ll give you a picture of the “student factory.”
Full-bearded fellows of thirty near died of
Their hunger for lore, as they slaved by the side of
Rejected aspirants with faces hairless,
Like sparrows in spring, scatter-brained and careless.
— Vigorous seamen whose adventurous mind
First drove them from school that real life they might
find —
But now to cruise wide on the sea they were craving,
Where the flag of free thought o’er all life wide is waving.
—Bankrupted merchants who their books had wooed
In their silent stores, till their creditors sued
And took from them their goods. Now they studied “on
credit.”
Beside them dawdling dandies. Near in scorn have I said it!
—“Non-Latin” law-students, young and ambitious,
“Prelims,” theologs, with their preaching officious;
—Cadets that in arm or in leg had a hurt;
— Peasants late in learning but now in for a spurt: —
Here they all wished through their Latin to drive
In one year or in two,—not in eight or in five.
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