Over the Radcliffe Dome the moon as the ghost of a flower
Weary and white awakes in the phantom fields of the sky:
The trustful shepherded clouds are asleep over steeple and tower,
Dark under Magdalen walls the Cher like a dream goes by.
Back, we come wandering back, poor ghosts, to the home that one misses
Out in the shelterless world, the world that was heaven to us then,
Back from the coil and the vastness, the stars and the boundless abysses,
Like monks from a pilgrimage stealing in bliss to their cloisters again.
City of dreams that we lost, accept now the gift we inherit—
Love, such a love as we knew not of old in the blaze of our noon,
We that have found thee at last, half City, half heavenly Spirit,
While over a mist of spires the sunset mellows the moon.
THE THREE SHIPS
(To an old Tune)
I
As I went up the mountain-side,
The sea below me glittered wide,
And, Eastward, far away, I spied
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,
The three great ships that take the tide
On Christmas Day in the morning.
II
Ye have heard the song, how these must ply
From the harbours of home to the ports o' the sky!
Do ye dream none knoweth the whither and why
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,
The three great ships go sailing by
On Christmas Day in the morning?