Once more is the blackbird’s fluting a mystery save that it speaks of him, last of the Bards.
“Beautiful Mother,” he sang, to Oxford, “too old not to be sad, too austere to look sad and to mourn! Sometimes thou art young to my eyes because thy children are always young, and for a little while it was a journey to youth itself to visit thee. More often, not only art thou old and austere, but thy fresh and youthful children seem to have learned austerity and the ways of age, for love of thee, graciously apparelling their youth,—so that I have met old Lyly in Holywell, and Johnson at the Little Clarendon Street bookshop, and Newman by Iffley rose-window,—with their age taken away, by virtue of a mellower light upon thy lawns and a mellower shade under thy towers, than other cities. Or have I truly heard thee weep when the last revelry is quiet, and the scholar by his lamp sees thee as thou wast and wilt be, and the moonlight has her will with the spires and gardens?[Pg 54][Pg 53]
IFFLEY CHURCH FROM THE SOUTH-EAST
The massive Norman tower of the Church shows to the left of the picture, the chancel extending eastward to the right.
A yew tree—perhaps of the same age as the Church—covers part of the building, serving to throw into relief the remains of a cross, the shaft and base of which are ancient.
Oh, to the sad how pleasant thy age, to the joyous how admirable thy youth! Yet to the wise, perhaps, thou art neither young nor old, but eternal; and not so much beautiful as Beauty herself, masked as Cybele! And perhaps, oh sweet and wise and solemn mother, thou wilt not hear unkindly thy latest froward courtier, or at least will let him pass unnoticed, since one that speaks of thee,
“Cannot dispraise without a kind of praise.”