Ii

IS this the end? Is this the pilgrim's day For dread, for dereliction, and for tears? Rather, from grass and air and many spheres In prophecy his heart is called away; And under English eaves, more still than they, Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears The long-arrested, the believing years Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say:

"Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best Who had such beauty"? or, with spirit fain To watch beside her darkened doors, go by With a new psalm: "O banished Light so nigh! Of them was I, who bore thee and who blest: Even here remember me when thou shalt reign."

VII. A December Walk

WHITHERSOEVER cold and fair ye flow, Take me, O gentle moon and gentler wind, Past Wyatt's cumbering portal, frost-entwined, And Merton 'neath that huge tiara's glow, And groves in bridal gossamer below Saint Mary's armoured spire; and whence aligned In altered eminence for dawn to find Sleep the droll Cæsars, hooded with the snow.

White sacraments of weather, shine on me! Upbear my footfall and my fancy sift, Lest either blemish an ensainted ground Spread so with childhood. Bid with me, outbound, On recollected wing mine angel drift Across new spheres of immortality.

VIII. The Old Dial of Corpus

WARDEN of hours and ages, here I dwell, Who saw young Keble pass, with sighing shook For good unborn; and towards a willow nook, Pole, princely in the senate and the cell; And doubting the near boom of Osney bell, Turning on me that sweetly subtile look, Erasmus, in his breast an Attic book: Peacemakers all, their dreams to ashes fell.

Naught steadfast may I image nor attain Save steadfast labour; futile must I grope After my god, like him, inconstant bright: But sun and shade will unto you remain Alternately a symbol and a hope, Men, spirits! of Emmanuel your Light.

IX. Rooks: New College Gardens

THROUGH rosy cloud and over thorny towers, Their wings with darkling autumn distance filled, From Isis' valley border, many-hilled, The rooks are crowding home as evening lowers: Not for men only, and their musing hours By battled walls did gracious Wykeham build These dewy spaces early sown and stilled, These dearest inland melancholy bowers.

Blest birds! A book held open on the knee Below, is all they guess of Adam's blight: With surer art the while, and simpler rite, They gather power in some monastic tree Where breathe against their docile breasts by night The scholar's star, the star of sanctity.

X. Above Port Meadow

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