Renaissance Nightmares

The oddest things come to you in the night. You dream of Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol (neither word pronounced quite the way you might think), you dream of excellence in wall-decorating graffiti, you dream of endless corridors hacked through the substance of eternity by teams of blind and persistent mice. And from all this conflation of peculiar and disturbing essences, you distil nothing but gibberish. Well, not nothing. You might actually get some doggerel with it. And so, Findhorn Productions LLC present:

The Ballad of the Globalised Student

What brave bright spirit lit your mind
And fired up your eye?
Be this the beacon that defined
The circle of your sky?

Did you divine within your sphere
Of silent crystal wrought
The heavy hands of time and fear
Around the neck of thought?

Were you prepared within your heart
To drink this draught of woe,
To say farewell and then depart
For places none would go?

Yet here you are upon this strand
Of sixfold human strain
Between the roaring ocean and
The land of summer grain;

And here you strive against a host
From castles built in air,
Each lance extended essays past
A token of despair.

And still you parry every blow
And blunt each slashing blade,
Learning more each day to know
From every escapade.

For even as you think you think
And thought that you were taught,
The clever thing to which you drink
Is never getting caught.

And also raise a toast – you must! –
To all your fallen friends
Who missing deadlines came to dust
And other sticky ends.

Give voice to hope and hope to voice,
The sun is gold on blue!
Never regret your childhood choice
To do what you must do.

Remember dauntless heroes now
Who gave their hope to God
And flicked the sweat upon their brow
Upon this humble sod.

Rise up, young student, on the wings
Of eagles carved in stone
And hope the sunlit future brings
More than this rock alone.

For what brave heart and brilliant mind
Can stand the test of time,
Unless with pen and ear refined
They give it up to rhyme?