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!