It is Research of which I sing,
Research, that salutary thing!
None can succeed, in World or Church,
Who does not prosecute Research:
For some read books, and toil thereat
Their intellect to waken:
But if you think Research is that
You’ re very much mistaken.
All in Columbia’ s blesséd States
They have no Smalls, or Mods, or Greats,
Nor do their faculties benumb
With any cold curriculum:
O no! for there the ambitious Boy,
Released from schools and birches,
At once pursues with studious joy
Original Researches:
A happy lot that Student’ s is,
— I wish that mine were like to his,—
Where in the bud no pedants nip
His Services to Scholarship:
And none need read with care and pain
Rome’ s History, or Greece’ s,
But each from his creative brain
Evolves semestrial Theses!
On books to pore is not the kind
Of thing to please the serious mind,—
I do not very greatly care
For such unsatisfying fare:
To seek the lore that in them lurks
Would last ad infinitum:
Let others read immortal works,—
I much prefer to write’ em!