Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
Trinity College
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (18091892)I
In which of old I wore the gown;
I roved at random through the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;
The storm their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophets blazoned on the panes;
The measured pulse of racing oars
Among the willows; paced the shores
And many a bridge, and all about
The same, but not the same; and last
Up that long walk of limes I past
To see the rooms in which he dwelt.
I lingered; all within was noise
Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys
That crashed the glass and beat the floor;
Of youthful friends, on mind and art
And labor, and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land;
But send it slackly from the string;
And one would pierce an outer ring,
And one an inner, here and there;
Would cleave the mark. A willing ear
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear
The rapt oration flowing free
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face,
In azure orbits heavenly-wise;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo.