Summary
'Tis not the Oxonian's somewhat heightened passion
That thrills our spirits when of thee we dream;
We feel for thee in quite another fashion
Such as might well beseem
The children of a rather colder clime,
Whose slower blood throbs not to fancy nor in rhyme.
The place—Heav'n help us! 'tis a cheerless region,
Featureless miles of fen and flat and fen—
And Camus footing slow, amid a legion
Of sluggish brooks—and then
The yellow brick, all that harsh Nature yields
To build dull rows of streets upon her own dull fields.
Yet take the Northward road, the Roman's planning,
Via Devana, some time in October;
Heaven lies most strangely open for your scanning,
And from the dull and sober
East Anglian, scene, your eyes seek plains of sky
That wider far and vaster than you dreamed do he.
Dull is the countryside; but those slow waters,
Gliding in peace beneath the ancient walls
Founded for God by great Kings and their daughters,
Chapels and courts and halls,
Keep the grass green; the elms stand, unsurpassed;
And lilac flowers each spring more glorious than the last.
Our grey old Alma Mater runs not riot
With swift ‘great movements’, seeks no vague ‘wide view’;
No! but she puts, in earnest mood and quiet,
A challenge to be true,
True to the fact, and serious in the quest
Of knowledge; that once gained, content she leaves the rest.
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- Cambridge Retrospect , pp. 141 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1943