But a ffoulis finds a way, and, sporting for the first time his oak, Gav sat down that evening to write unaided the whole of the first issue. All night the choiring bells heralded the flight of the hours through the Octobral air; all night he kept his fire alight with faggots of his friends’ rejected manuscripts. By five o’clock he had completed an editorial statement of policy; four political leaders--on Jacobites, Democrats, Jacobitic Democrats and Democratic Jacobites; a short, witty, and not unappreciative autobiography; and a list of hockey and O.T.C. fixtures for the term. More, by half-past five he had finished two features designed to appeal to the less intellectual strata of his fellow-undergraduates--a series of pithy personal paragraphs headed “Things We Want To Know,” and a selection of letters on the desirability of a bicycling Blue, signed by such pseudonyms as “Wadhamensis Indignus,” “Ikonoklastes,” “Laudator Pasti,” and “A Friend of W. G. Grace.” It was a veritable _tour de force_. But the paper was taking on a more distinctive tone, he felt. Six o’clock. Only the promised poems were lacking now, and Gaveston determined that, ere seven struck, he would have at least two poems worthy of himself and of the latest of Oxford’s reviews. Iambics or trochees? Sonnet or cæsura? Meditatively he stirred with the poker the charred ashes of his friends’ inadequate versifications, but somehow the divine afflatus lingered. At last he lit a cigarette, mixed a cocktail, and resorted to a daring expedient. He took down his well-fingered set of the little blue books of Oxford Poetry. Here if anywhere would he find inspiration. Yet no--his brain seemed a trifle weary, and still virgin-white lay the paper before him.… But, even if the heaven-sent flame did not descend, surely industry and ingenuity could start the fire. Could he not fashion from this corpus of the Oxford tradition, choosing a line here and there, a living, eclectic, synthetic Poem? Surely in this way would emerge something exquisitely pure, embodying the undiluted essence of the Oxford he loved so dearly. And by half-past six he had succeeded. He ran his eye lovingly over it. _Le Mal_ My time in grief and merriment In low melodious threnodies of Lent, Of reeds and fanciful psalteries Has more strings than our stringed instruments, O Lily Lady of Loveliness, God’s beauteous innocence! O fathomless, incurious sea! Light lips upon the lilied pool, Sounding her passionate symphony, Grow fat once more, and seem to be made full! When you and you sit by the fire, I would to God thou wert my own good son-- τούτῳ μάλιστα δὴ προσθετέον O Lord of light and laughter and desire! He replaced the row of little blue books, where he might find them were they needed, and read over the poem they had given him from their storehouse.