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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Harrow-on-the-Hill

Harrow

By John Bruce Norton (1815–1883)

IF some good fairy granted me to play

A chosen portion of my life again,

I would not ask an Oxford hour. The vain

Attempt to ape the follies of the day,

How soon it palls; while ever fresh and gay

Riseth the vision of the school-boy train

Who shouted, thoughtless, on dear Harrow’s plain,

And clomb the hill when eve was growing gray.

O for the careless days, the dreamless nights;

The broken bounds, the plunge into the pool;

The elastic feet that ne’er the leap refuse;

The summer games, the winter’s mimicked fights:

O for the guileless friendships formed at school,

The first shy whispers of the natural muse!