I sing of arms and the woman,

Fated to be an exile,

Who long since left the land of Cambridgeshire and came to Durham, to the shores of the River Wear;

And a great pounding she took by pen and calculator at the hands of the heavenly gods

Because of the fierce and unforgetting anger of Edexcel.

Tell me, oh Muse, of the sufferings that were cast down;

Tell me of the cruel destiny meted out by Zeus and the Fates,

The path prescribed through necessity, though necessity herself shrank from the task.

Was it some malign god at work?

Perhaps Athene, goddess of wisdom, had been left neglected,

While Aphrodite held sway over men's hearts, goddess of the night,

Whiling away the hours in sin?

Or did Artemis, the divine huntress, take the daytime in rein,

Leaving Zeus' daughter unbeloved, her altars neglected?

For no, yet such is the cruelty of Fate, my child.

Chance raises a man to the heights; chance casts him down.

But chance belongs to a cruel master and he will judge us all,

Weighing in his hand the scales come the Portunalia.