The plain gives freedom. Hither from the town
How oft a dreamer and a book of yore
Escaped the lamplit Square, and heard no more
Inroll from Cowley turf the game's renown,
But bade the vernal sky with spices drown
His head by Plato's in the grass, before
Yon oar that's never old, the sunset oar,
At Medley Lock was laid reluctant down!
So seeming far the confines and the crowd,
The gross routine, the cares that vex and tire,
From this large light, sad thoughts in it, high-driven,
Go happier than the inly-moving cloud
Who lets her vesture fall, a floss of fire,
Abstracted, on the ivory hills of heaven.
[XI. Undertones at Magdalen]
Fair are the finer creature-sounds; of these
Is Magdalen full: her bees, the while they drop
Susurrant to the garth from weeds atop;
And round the priestless Pulpit, auguries
Of wrens in council from an hundred leas;
And merry fish of Cherwell, fain to stop
The water-plantain's way; and deer that crop
Delicious herbage under choral trees.
The cry for silver and gold in Christendom
Without, threads not her silence and her dark.
Only against the isolate Tower there break
Low rhythmic murmurs of good men to come:
Invasive seas of hushed approach that make
Memorial music, would the ear but hark.
[XII. A Last View]
I
Where down the hill, across the hidden ford
Stretches the open aisle from scene to scene,
By halted horses silently we lean,
Gazing enchanted from our steeper sward.
How yon low loving skies of April hoard
A plot of pinnacles! and how with sheen
Of spike and ball her languid clouds between
Grey Oxford grandly rises riverward!
Sweet on those dim long-dedicated walls
Silver as rain the frugal sunshine falls;
Slowly sad eyes resign them, bound afar.
Dear Beauty, dear Tradition, fare you well,
And powers that aye aglow in you, impel
Our quickening spirits from the slime we are.