| |
| KNOW you her secret none can utter? | |
| —Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown? | |
| Still on the spire the pigeons flutter; | |
| Still by the gateway haunts the gown; | |
| Still on the street from corbel and gutter, | 5 |
| Faces of stone look down. | |
| |
| Faces of stone, and other faces— | |
| Some from library windows wan | |
| Forth on her gardens, her green spaces, | |
| Peer and turn to their books anon. | 10 |
| Hence, my Muse, from the green oases | |
| Gather the tent, begone! | |
| |
| Nay, should she by the pavement linger | |
| Under the rooms where once she play’d, | |
| Who from the feast would rise and fling her | 15 |
| One poor sou for her serenade? | |
| One poor laugh for the antic finger | |
| Thrumming a lute-string fray’d? | |
| |
| Once, my dear,—but the world was young, then— | |
| Magdalen elms and Trinity limes— | 20 |
| Lissom the blades and the backs that swung then, | |
| Eight good men in the good old times— | |
| Careless we, and the chorus flung then | |
| Under St. Mary’s chimes! | |
| |
| Reins lay loose and the ways led random— | 25 |
| Christ Church meadow and Iffley track— | |
| ‘Idleness horrid and dogcart’ (tandem)— | |
| Aylesbury grind and Bicester pack— | |
| Pleasant our lines, and faith! we scann’d ’em; | |
| Having that artless knack. | 30 |
| |
| Come, old limmer, the times grow colder: | |
| Leaves of the creeper redden and fall. | |
| Was it a hand then clapp’d my shoulder? | |
| —Only the wind by the chapel wall. | |
| Dead leaves drift on the lute: so … fold her | 35 |
| Under the faded shawl. | |
| |
| Never we wince, though none deplore us, | |
| We, who go reaping that we sow’d; | |
| Cities at cock-crow wake before us— | |
| Hey, for the lilt of the London road! | 40 |
| One look back and a rousing chorus! | |
| Never a palinode! | |
| |
| Still on her spire the pigeons hover; | |
| Still by her gateway haunts the gown. | |
| Ah, but her secret? You, young lover, | 45 |
| Drumming her old ones forth from town, | |
| Know you the secret none discover? | |
| Tell it—when you go down. | |
| |
| Yet if at length you seek her, prove her, | |
| Lean to her whispers never so nigh; | 50 |
| Yet if at last not less her lover | |
| You in your hansom leave the High; | |
| Down from her towers a ray shall hover, | |
| Touch you—a passer-by! | |
| |
