VI. On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford

Imperial Iffley, Cumnor bowered in green, And Templar Sandford in the boatman's call, And sweet-belled Appleton, and Elsfield wall That dost upon adoring ivies lean; Meek Binsey; Dorchester, where streams convene Bidding on graves thy solemn shadow fall; Clear Cassington, soaring perpetual, Holton, and Hampton Poyle, and fanes between: If one of all in your sad courts that come Belovèd and disparted! be your own, Kin to the souls ye had, while yet endures Some memory of a great communion known At home in quarries of old Christendom,— Ah, mark him: he will lay his cheek to yours.

Is this the end? Is this the pilgrim's day For dread, for dereliction, and for tears? Rather, from grass and air and many spheres In prophecy his heart is called away; And under English eaves, more still than they, Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears The long-arrested, the believing years Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say: "Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best Who had such beauty"? or, with spirit fain To watch beside her darkened doors, go by With a new psalm: "O banished Light so nigh! Of them was I, who bore thee and who blest: Even here remember me when thou shalt reign."