University of Virginia Library

Search this document 

WINCHESTER

To Campbell Dodgson.
At thought of thee, the old words come:
The old Eia! quid silemus?
Then, Dulce Domum resonemus!
For thou art our true Home.
Praises of thee,
From such as we,
Thy children, well beseem us.
Great, among many great and free;
Of many fair, the fairest:
England's reward of praise thou sharest,
With sisters worthy thee:
But first-born thou,
Who stateliest now
The crown of ages wearest.

267

Thou hast the winning of all hearts:
All the whole wide world over,
In every son thou hast a lover,
Won by thy loving arts:
Good men and true,
All the world through,
Who loved thee, far graves cover.
Though weariness, full hard to bear,
Should fill me many a morrow:
Mine yet, old joys of thee to borrow,
And thoughts of days, that were.
To know me thine,
And know thee mine,
Could comfort many a sorrow.
Our thought of thee is as the thought
Of dawn, when nights are bitter:
The shadowy world begins to glitter;
And lo! the sun hath brought
Bright flames to birth;
While dewy earth
Thrills at the birds' clear twitter.
Our joy in thee is as the joy
Of bells, when airs are stilly:
Through pastures lone, down moorlands hilly,
They ply their grave employ:
Peace lulls the day,
Rest soothes the way;
Hearts glow, that late were chilly.

268

A place of friends! a place of books!
A place of good things olden!
With these delights, the years were golden;
And life wore sunny looks.
They fled at last:
But to that past
Am I in all beholden.
A place of friends indeed! And age
Such friendship only mellows:
And, as our autumn slowly yellows,
Defies the wintry rage.
Good luck befall
You, one and all,
The best of all good fellows!
Soft twilights of enchaunted June,
Gray Courts, green Meads, embracing!
Side by side wandered we, slow pacing,
Till silvered rise of moon:
By Oxford towers
Come scarce such hours,
Her Quads and Gardens gracing.
O Cloister Time, beyond compare,
On Hills, down Meads, down River!
When summer magic could deliver
The soul from every care!
That was to live:
And thanks we give
To Winchester, the giver.

269

Days of May blossom and June heat,
When all the ways were fragrant!
How good it was to play the vagrant,
Over the country sweet!
The long hours through,
In skies, how blue!
The mighty sun stood flagrant.
And ah, those hours of glorious life,
On Playing Fields of Eton!
No better field for foes to meet on,
Foes in a friendly strife.
A right fair place,
With right good grace,
To be beaten, or to beat on.
When Term dies down to Domum Day,
And last farewells draw nearer:
Fairer grows Winchester, and dearer,
To those, who must away.
Gather then round!
Send the old sound
To the heart os every hearer!
Calm glide the streams through Water Meads;
Calmly stand Hills above them.
Hark to the song of those, who love them!
How the old music pleads!
Come, what may come:
No sweeter Home
To deeper love shall move them.

270

But limes are rich in flower, and bees
Make hum, and August follows:
Away we go, like Daulian swallows,
Far from our towers and trees.
Past the way flies,
Where College lies,
Alone in her ancient hollows.
Back too, like birds from overseas,
Birds of a common feather,
Gladly we flock again together,
Back to our towers and trees.
College in sight!
Hills! gently bright
In the golden autumn weather.
And then, each heartening winter day:
When patriot zeal arouses,
In College, Commoners, and Houses,
The spirit of the fray!
Time to begin!
Ah, what glad din
Beneath the wintry boughs is!
Only nine years, but nine ago;
Could dearer rank befall me?
With joy I won the right to call me
A College Junior: so
All those good things,
Tom Warton sings,
Were waiting to enthrall me.

271

How fair the ancient city shone,
That best of red Septembers!
How well my haunted heart remembers
That evening, nine years gone!
O faces bright
With ruddy light!
O dreams beside the embers!
Proud pleasure, beneath Wykeham's roof,
That first of six years' slumbers!
What dreams, more dear than poets' numbers,
Clung round those walls age-proof!
Such dreams as those,
No grown man knows:
No care, nor want, encumbers.
Before us, years that charmed full well:
Five centuries behind us.
So past with future strove to bind us,
Each with its mighty spell.
O fond debate!
No cruel fate,
To either, false shall find us.
Then, with the rising of the sun,
From dreams, to day-dreams woken:
We sang Iam Lucis: happy token
For our new life begun:
Heirs of old race,
In that fair place:
One fellowship unbroken.

272

O pleasant, tranquil time secure!
O comfortable season!
For faith in youth is nature's reason,
Though youth may not endure.
Use, while you may,
The summer day:
Distrust at dawn is treason.
Far off, the battling world was loud,
The cries of war resounded:
In peace our Paradise abounded,
Far from the madding crowd.
Our happier dream,
No angry gleam,
Nor turbulent noise, confounded.
Youth is to love the air of noon,
In virginal clear May time:
The joyous light and heat of haytime,
The full red harvest moon:
To make earth's field
Those first flowers yield,
Which far outlive life's playtime.
O men of sterner stuff! You blame
Light leisure's poor musician?
Your youth was restless with ambition?
Your summer was all flame?
You on your past
May look at last,
Wistful with vain contrition.

273

Know you not, Manners Makyth Man?
O toil and task laborious!
Yet issue forth at last victorious,
Men of a simple plan:
But vexing haste,
And leisure's waste,
Prove graceless and inglorious.
Peace be with you! and let me muse:
Let mind and senses wander
Back to the perfect Home, far yonder!
The fragrant summer dews
Are falling there!
Me no such air
Charms, while I sit and ponder.
Campbell! do you remember still,
How, nine years gone, we breasted
A storm of storms, where pine trees crested
The ridge of snowy hill?
Cold winds and strong
Drove us along:
And wildly well we jested!
And how, through all the country side,
We talked, much like our betters,
Of right and wrong, in arts and letters,
Wanderers far and wide?
Then thought was free;
So young were we,
With years, that feel no fetters.

274

Would, I still wore the long black gown,
In cloistral habit vested:
Would, that all thoughts and cares I rested,
Dreaming on Twyford Down:
Glad but to mark,
How the clear lark,
Singing, the sunlight breasted!
On Hills to lie, some endless hour,
Watching the stream wind slowly
Through verdant Water Meads, past holy
Saint Cross, the grayheads' bower:
While lone Downs brood
In quietude,
And gentle melancholy.
Here walked, by each fair river path,
Good Brothers of the Angle:
Whose sweet thoughts knew to disentangle
Peace from the days of wrath:
Here Walton went,
Here Chalkhill spent,
Calm hours, untaught to wrangle.
And many an haunt I think on now,
Where first I learn to savour
True verse, that won the old world's favour;
Read on some lonely brow,
That overlooks
Old village nooks
With names of homely flavour.

275

Chilcomb or Compton: loved far more,
Than those famed Hinkseys double:
Though none have taken the sweet trouble,
To sing their simple store
Of pastoral joys:
Their wildest noise,
Birds whirring from the stubble.
Still dwell they, where of old they dwelt,
The Muses and the Graces:
We, in their olden, holy places,
We too their influence felt:
We too have been
Their friends, and seen
The sunlight on their faces.
Here was there court: each Muse and Grace
Found votaries full willing:
One prompted to the Splendid Shilling,
And one inspired the Chace:
And one found here
A bard austere;
His Night with grave Thoughts filling.
Here, beneath Winton trees, first breathed
A faery lyre enchaunted:
Ah, Collins! at what cost was granted
To thee the laurel, wreathed
With faery flowers,
At moonlit hours
Plucked in wild woodlands haunted!

276

Still round the Cloisters, airs of Death
Wander, and touch the dreamer:
Music of Death, tired man's redeemer!
Rest thee, lie down! it saith.
Who rested here,
Death's lover were:
Death's friend, not Death's blasphemer.
Thy Browne, who saw the ages pass
In funeral procession;
Whose eyes explored Death's vast possession;
Was it thy holy grass,
And Chauntry dim,
First called on him
To make his soul's Confession?
Here first, perchance, thoughts filled his breast
Memorial, monumental:
The ancient mysteries oriental;
Faiths of the whiter West:
Dark pagan nights;
Fair Christian rites,
The Dirge and Masses Trental.
Eton's great Provost, Wotton, came,
Enriched with courtly glory;
And, calling back his youth's old story,
He found thee still the same:
All things were so,
Se puero:
He alone changed and hoary.

277

For five last months retired, he gave
His soul to contemplation;
His memory to meditation;
Then all, unto the grave:
To Eton's trust,
His reverend dust:
Share we his veneration.
When Death comes nigh, and thoughts grow sad,
And all the skies look dreary:
When other places all are weary,
Save thee, the ever glad:
Sweet will it be
To visit thee,
With an Homeward Heus Rogere!
Timely would shine our Morning Star:
No need, with voices fretful,
To call that herald light forgetful:
Phoshore! quid iubar?
And Hesperus
Would bring to us,
Calm twilight, unregretful.
There would we roam, and haply quote
Some old, well-proven poet:
Plain truth, as Horace loves to show it,
Or Virgil's holier note:
Round us, the noise
Of just such boys,
As we were: could they know it!

278

Ah! fast and dark they lengthen out,
The shadows on the dial:
Winter and age brook no denial,
Nor leave us long in doubt.
Through their bleak hours,
What withered flowers
Put memory on her trial!
Whose face flashed there? What voice was that,
Voice, that comes back and lingers?
Whose hand touched mine with flying fingers?
Whose laugh is this, whereat
Down the dim track
Old joys come back,
And songs of long-lost singers?
Up Hills our years would find the climb,
That grassy climb, grown steeper:
We'd rest in Trench; and Trench was deeper,
We'd fancy, in our time:
Then, passing Maze,
To turn and gaze,
Tranced, like a dreaming sleeper!
The mountainous Cathedral gray;
College, so fairly towered;
And Wolvesey ruins ivy-bowered;
And West Gate, far away:
Silent and still,
To gaze our fill,
By memory overpowered!

279

O Venta! Caer Gwent! great and glad
Wast thou, ere Saxon yeoman,
Ere nobler Normandy's mailed bowman,
Saw thee: Apollo had
His temple bright
Of song and light,
Here, when the world was Roman.
And wert thou Camelot? Wert thou
That shrine of all things knightly?
Through the dark shrouding mists, how brightly
Those glories flash forth now!
High chivalry,
Fair courtesy,
Enriching Winton rightly.
Surely the magic of the Celt,
White City! doth not fail thee:
Whatever change and chance assail thee,
Still is that spirit felt:
That ancient grace
Still haunts thy face;
And long may it avail thee.
Where reigned Apollo, Wykeham trod,
Child of a Saxon peasant:
Surely, Apollo still was present,
The old world's goodliest god:
Light's king, and song's,
His reign prolongs,
Throned in a place so pleasant.

280

On this trenched hill, new come from sea,
The robber Danes have clustered;
On yonder hill, have Roundheads mustered,
Oliver's Battery:
Oh! blade, and ball,
And crossbow, all
Down Itchen vale have blustered!
But dearest far of all to us,
Our College! we confess thee:
Scarce can our simple love address thee;
Silent, we greet thee thus.
While far above,
With perfect love,
Thy vanished children bless thee.
Sweet Home, whose excellent delight
Grows with the growing ages:
Nor sons untrue, nor martial rages,
Have spoiled thee to our sight:
Nurtured by thee,
Time yet shall see
Thy singers and thy sages.
A royal spirit lives in thee,
So loftily descended:
Through five great centuries attended,
By true posterity:
Sons on each hand,
Safe thou dost stand,
So plenteously befriended.

281

With thee my verse begins: thy name
My verse with music closes.
If sounds, like odours of old roses,
Recall, whence first they came:
My verse, may be,
To thoughts of thee
Some hearts of thine disposes.
But vain all song: what need of me,
To sing thee and to praise thee?
No chaunted thanksgiving pourtrays thee,
Limen amabile!
Enough, to own
One praise alone:
His, whose right hand could raise thee.
Only, how hard to stay your flow,
Old memories of pleasure!
O years of everlasting treasure!
O life of light and glow!
Youth was in flower:
Hope was in power;
Hope, without pause or measure.
Ah, fare you well! ah, fare you well!
Dear years of youth and laughter!
Who knows, what time may bring hereafter?
Whose tongue can fate foretell?
Nay! let that pass:
Fill up the glass,
With Auld Lang Syne to the rafter

282

And, Omnibus Wiccamicis!
To honour one another,
Becomes the children of one mother;
A mother, such as this!
Honour, and health,
And righteous wealth,
To brother and to brother!
Ah, truest, sweetest, commonplace!
True lovers nought can sever:
Our love to thee, then, faulters never,
Dear mother of our race!
Wykehamists, we
Cry, Hail to thee!
With a love, that lasts for ever.
Wykeham! to whom our joys are due,
Shall we not fall before thee?
Love thee, and thank thee, and adore thee
With passionate praises true?
What she too owes
To thee, well knows
The motherland, that bore thee!
Year after year, to honour thee,
Thy Wykehamists will gather:
Not strangers, young and old; nay, rather
One loving family:
Thy name, a bond
All ties beyond:
Our Founder and our Father!

283

Before thine altar tomb we fall,
The silence growing vaster:
Our Founder, Father, gracious Master!
Thine always, one and all:
Thine! and as days
Grow, so thy praise
But firmer grows and faster.
Winchester! Home, to whom our hearts,
Full of glad memories, take us:
Let all else fail, thou wilt forsake us
Never: and though time parts
Us from thy side,
We still abide
The lovers, thou didst make us.
Lovers: for we have known thee well,
And love thee, since we know thee.
But how with heart and soul to show thee
Our love, we cannot tell.
Ah! may we be
But worthy thee:
Or evermore forgo thee.
Now once more let the old words come,
The old Eia! quid silemus?
Now, Dulce Domum resonemus!
For love of thee, Sweet Home!
Vivas et stes!
Te indies
Amantius amemus.
1889.