Leafing through the Latin Dictionary

fuga, fugas — music now, not back
at school where Harry Roberts flashed his gown,
a toga to berate a class as slack
as Rome became; we’d been meant to be
English Augustans, but were soon brought down
to being worthy only of a few
emotive Saxon nouns and verbs: the sea
had brought our Fathers to a sanded shore,
packed tight with iron sermons on The Poor —
but still the dictionary had work to do:
peregrinus, wanderers in need
of some Virgilian outcome — might this book
have shown how Europe’s words could safely bleed
on strands Aeneas left to Captain Cook?

oppidanus — not from Rome, but not
from Eton...