Careless we and the chorus flung then.
Under St. Mary's chimes!
"Still on her spire the pigeons hover;
Still by her gateway flits the gown;
Ah, but her secret? You, young lover,
Drumming her old ones forth from town,
Know you the secret none discover?
Tell it—when you go down."
What Matthew Arnold did for the interpretation of Oxford through the medium of prose, that Mr. Quiller-Couch has done through the medium of verse. In the poem from which I have just quoted two stanzas he conveys, as no one else has ever conveyed it in poetry, the tender and elusive charm of that incomparable place.
"Know you her secret none can utter—
Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?"
It is a hard question, and susceptible of some very prosaic and therefore inappropriate answers. The true answer can, I think, only be given by those for whom Oxford lies, half hid, in the enchanted past: "Tell it—when you go down."
Some parts of the spell which Oxford exercises on those who are subjected to her influence are in no sense secret. We perceive them from the day when we first set foot within her precincts, and the sense of them abides with us for ever.