Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Oxford

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902)

OVER, the four long years! And now there rings

One voice of freedom and regret: Farewell!

Now old remembrance sorrows, and now sings:

But song from sorrow, now, I cannot tell.

City of weather’d cloister and worn court;

Grey city of strong towers and clustering spires:

Where art’s fresh loveliness would first resort;

Where lingering art kindled her latest fires!

Where on all hands, wondrous with ancient grace,

Grace touch’d with age, rise works of goodliest men:

Next Wykeham’s art obtain their splendid place

The zeal of Inigo, the strength of Wren.

Where at each coign of every antique street,

A memory hath taken root in stone:

There, Raleigh shone; there, toil’d Franciscan feet;

There, Johnson flinch’d not, but endured alone.

There, Shelley dream’d his white Platonic dreams;

There, classic Landor throve on Roman thought;

There, Addison pursued his quiet themes;

There, smiled Erasmus, and there, Colet taught.

And there, O memory more sweet than all!

Lived he, whose eyes keep yet our passing light;

Whose crystal lips Athenian speech recall;

Who wears Rome’s purple with least pride, most right.

That is the Oxford strong to charm us yet:

Eternal in her beauty and her past.

What, though her soul be vex’d? She can forget

Cares of an hour: only the great things last.

Only the gracious air, only the charm,

And ancient might of true humanities,

These nor assault of man, nor time, can harm;

Not these, nor Oxford with her memories.

Together have we walk’d with willing feet

Gardens of plenteous trees, bowering soft lawn;

Hills whither Arnold wander’d; and all sweet

June meadows, from the troubling world withdrawn;

Chapels of cedarn fragrance, and rich gloom

Pour’d from empurpled panes on either hand;

Cool pavements, carved with legends of the tomb;

Grave haunts, where we might dream, and understand.

Over, the four long years! And unknown powers

Call to us, going forth upon our way:

Ah! Turn we, and look back upon the towers

That rose above our lives, and cheer’d the day.

Proud and serene, against the sky they gleam:

Proud and secure, upon the earth they stand.

Our city hath the air of a pure dream,

And hers indeed is a Hesperian land.

Think of her so! The wonderful, the fair,

The immemorial, and the ever young:

The city sweet with our forefathers’ care:

The city where the Muses all have sung.

Ill times may be; she hath no thought of time:

She reigns beside the waters yet in pride.

Rude voices cry: but in her ears the chime

Of full sad bells brings back her old springtide.

Like to a queen in pride of place, she wears

The splendour of a crown in Radcliffe’s dome.

Well fare she—well! As perfect beauty fares,

And those high places that are beauty’s home.