Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Cambridge

Trinity College

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

I PAST beside the reverend walls

In which of old I wore the gown;

I roved at random through the town,

And saw the tumult of the halls;

And heard once more in college fanes

The storm their high-built organs make,

And thunder-music, rolling, shake

The prophets blazoned on the panes;

And caught once more the distant shout,

The measured pulse of racing oars

Among the willows; paced the shores

And many a bridge, and all about

The same gray flats again, and felt

The same, but not the same; and last

Up that long walk of limes I past

To see the rooms in which he dwelt.

Another name was on the door:

I lingered; all within was noise

Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys

That crashed the glass and beat the floor;

Where once we held debate, a band

Of youthful friends, on mind and art

And labor, and the changing mart,

And all the framework of the land;

When one would aim an arrow fair,

But send it slackly from the string;

And one would pierce an outer ring,

And one an inner, here and there;

And last the master-bowman, he

Would cleave the mark. A willing ear

We lent him. Who, but hung to hear

The rapt oration flowing free

From point to point with power and grace,

And music in the bounds of law,

To those conclusions when we saw

The God within him light his face,

And seem to lift the form, and glow

In azure orbits heavenly-wise;

And over those ethereal eyes

The bar of Michael Angelo.