XVII. OXFORD IN WINTER.
I
City of wildest sunsets, which do pile
Their dark-red castles on that woody brow!
Fair as thou art in summer's moonlight smile,
There are a hundred cities fair as thou.
But still with thee alone all seasons round
Beauty and change in their own right abound.
II
Whole winter days swift rainy lights descend,
Ride o'er the plain upon the swelling breeze,
And in a momentary brightness blend
Walls, towers, and flooded fields, and leafless trees:
Lights of such glory as may not be seen
In the deep northern vales and mountains green.
III
Coy city, that dost swathe thy summer self
In willow lines and elmy avenue,
Each Winter comes, and brings some hidden pelf,
Buttress or Cross or gable out to view:
While his thin sunlight frugal lustre sheds
On the straight streams and yellow osier beds.
IV
But thy main glory is that winter wood,
With its dead fern and holly's christmas green,
And mosses pale, and trees that have not strewed
Their withered leaves, which yet perchance are seen
Struggling to reach the spring, as though for them
New sap would rise from out the grateful stem.
V
A wood in winter is a goodly sight,
With branch and trunk and whitely-withered weed:
Chiefly a wood like this, where many a night
In Stuart times the cavalier's fast steed
Spurned the dry leaves through all the rustling copse,
And waked the cushat in the oak-tree tops.
VI
O Bagley! thou art fair at break of day,
When freshest incense breathes from waking flowers,
Fair when the songless noon hath come to lay
Her spell of sylvan silence on thy bowers;
But night is thine enchantment, magic night,
When all is vast, and strange, and dusky bright:—
VII
The winter night, when, as a welcome boon,
Down giant stems the stealthy beams may glide,
And the stray sheep lie sleeping in the moon,
With their own fairy shadows at their side;
While through the frosty night-air every tower
In Abingdon and Oxford tolls the hour.
VIII
Yea, on a poet's word, good men should go,
And up and down thy lurking valleys climb;
Thy faded woodlands, thy fair withered show,
Are sweet to see; and at cathedral time
'Tis sweet on some wild afternoon to hear,
Far off, those loud complaining bells brought near.
IX
They may have sadness, too, whene'er the wind
Keeps moaning here and there about the woods;
And fear may track their homeward steps behind
Along the moated path and reedy floods;
For in the stream the moon's white image rides,
And, as they change, she also changeth sides.
X
Why is it, city of all seasons! why—
So few have homes where there are homes so fair?
They come and go: it is thy destiny,
Which for its very greatness thou must bear,
To be a nation's heart, thou city dear!
Sending the young blood from thee every year.
