This Poem is remarkable as being one sustained sentence.
LXXXVII.
He revisits Cambridge, the chief scene of past intimacy with Hallam, and roams about the different colleges.
The expression “high-built organ,” probably alludes to the organ being here, as in some cathedrals, reared above the screen which separates the choir from the nave.
“The prophets blazon’d on the panes,”
refers to the stained glass windows, and more particularly to those, perhaps, in King’s College chapel. The scenery at the back of the colleges is vividly recalled.
He stops at the door of Hallam’s old room, now occupied by a noisy wine party. It was there that his friend used to achieve such controversial triumphs—ever as the master-bowman hitting the mark in argument, when
“we saw
The God within him light his face,”
like the martyr Stephen’s;
“And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo”—