Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SCHOOLFELLOWS, by WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SCHOOLFELLOWS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Where are my friends? I am alone
Last Line: Just eton boys grown heavy.
Subject(s): Classmates; Friendship; Life; Memory; Solitude; Schoolmates; Loneliness


Where are my friends? I am alone;
No playmate shares my beaker:
Some lie beneath the churchyard stone,
And some—before the Speaker;
And some compose a tragedy,
And some compose a rondo;
And some draw sword for Liberty,
And some draw pleas for John Doe.

Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes
Without the fear of sessions;
Charles Medlar loathed false quantities
As much as false professions;
Now Mill keeps order in the land,
A magistrate pedantic;
And Medlar's feet repose unscanned
Beneath the wide Atlantic.

Wild Nick, whose oaths made such a din,
Does Dr. Martext's duty;
And Mullion, with that monstrous chin,
Is married to a Beauty;
And Darrell studies, week by week,
His Mant, and not his Manton;
And Ball, who was but poor at Greek,
Is very rich at Canton.

And I am eight-and-twenty now;—
The world's cold chains have bound me;
And darker shades are on my brow,
And sadder scenes around me:
In Parliament I fill my seat,
With many other noodles;
And lay my head in Jermyn Street,
And sip my hock at Boodle's.

But often, when the cares of life
Have set my temples aching,
When visions haunt me of a wife,
When duns await my waking,
When Lady Jane is in a pet,
Or Hoby in a hurry,
When Captain Hazard wins a bet,
Or Beaulieu spoils a curry,—

For hours and hours I think and talk
Of each remembered hobby;
I long to lounge in Poets' Walk,
To shiver in the lobby;
I wish that I could run away
From House, and Court, and Levee,
Where bearded men appear to-day
Just Eton boys grown heavy.





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