| |
| OVER, the four long years! And now there rings | |
| One voice of freedom and regret: Farewell! | |
| Now old remembrance sorrows, and now sings: | |
| But song from sorrow, now, I cannot tell. | |
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| City of weather’d cloister and worn court; | 5 |
| Grey city of strong towers and clustering spires: | |
| Where art’s fresh loveliness would first resort; | |
| Where lingering art kindled her latest fires! | |
| |
| Where on all hands, wondrous with ancient grace, | |
| Grace touch’d with age, rise works of goodliest men: | 10 |
| Next Wykeham’s art obtain their splendid place | |
| The zeal of Inigo, the strength of Wren. | |
| |
| Where at each coign of every antique street, | |
| A memory hath taken root in stone: | |
| There, Raleigh shone; there, toil’d Franciscan feet; | 15 |
| There, Johnson flinch’d not, but endured alone. | |
| |
| There, Shelley dream’d his white Platonic dreams; | |
| There, classic Landor throve on Roman thought; | |
| There, Addison pursued his quiet themes; | |
| There, smiled Erasmus, and there, Colet taught. | 20 |
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| And there, O memory more sweet than all! | |
| Lived he, whose eyes keep yet our passing light; | |
| Whose crystal lips Athenian speech recall; | |
| Who wears Rome’s purple with least pride, most right. | |
| |
| That is the Oxford strong to charm us yet: | 25 |
| Eternal in her beauty and her past. | |
| What, though her soul be vex’d? She can forget | |
| Cares of an hour: only the great things last. | |
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| Only the gracious air, only the charm, | |
| And ancient might of true humanities, | 30 |
| These nor assault of man, nor time, can harm; | |
| Not these, nor Oxford with her memories. | |
| |
| Together have we walk’d with willing feet | |
| Gardens of plenteous trees, bowering soft lawn; | |
| Hills whither Arnold wander’d; and all sweet | 35 |
| June meadows, from the troubling world withdrawn; | |
| |
| Chapels of cedarn fragrance, and rich gloom | |
| Pour’d from empurpled panes on either hand; | |
| Cool pavements, carved with legends of the tomb; | |
| Grave haunts, where we might dream, and understand. | 40 |
| |
| Over, the four long years! And unknown powers | |
| Call to us, going forth upon our way: | |
| Ah! Turn we, and look back upon the towers | |
| That rose above our lives, and cheer’d the day. | |
| |
| Proud and serene, against the sky they gleam: | 45 |
| Proud and secure, upon the earth they stand. | |
| Our city hath the air of a pure dream, | |
| And hers indeed is a Hesperian land. | |
| |
| Think of her so! The wonderful, the fair, | |
| The immemorial, and the ever young: | 50 |
| The city sweet with our forefathers’ care: | |
| The city where the Muses all have sung. | |
| |
| Ill times may be; she hath no thought of time: | |
| She reigns beside the waters yet in pride. | |
| Rude voices cry: but in her ears the chime | 55 |
| Of full sad bells brings back her old springtide. | |
| |
| Like to a queen in pride of place, she wears | |
| The splendour of a crown in Radcliffe’s dome. | |
| Well fare she—well! As perfect beauty fares, | |
| And those high places that are beauty’s home. | 60 |
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