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 spirit sinks 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 kisses lain For witness on 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.” VII. A DECEMBER WALK. Whithersoever cold and fair ye flow, Calm tides of moonlit midnight, bear my mind! Past Christchurch gate, with leafy frost entwined, And Merton in a huge tiara’s glow, And groves in bridal gossamers below Saint Mary’s armoured spire; and whence aligned In altered eminence for dawn to find, Sleep the droll Cæsars, hooded with the snow. White sacraments of weather, shine on me! Upbear my footfall, and my fancy sift, Lest either blemish an ensainted ground Spread so with childhood. Bid with me, outbound, On recollected wing mine angel drift Across new spheres of immortality. VIII. UNDERTONES AT MAGDALEN. Fair are the finer creature-sounds; of these Is Magdalen full: her bees, the while they drop Susurrant in the garth from weeds atop; And round the priestless Pulpit, auguries Of wrens in council from a hundred leas; And Cherwell fish in laughter fain to stop The water-plantain’s way; and deer that crop Delicious herbage under choral trees. The cry for silver and gold in Christendom Without, threads not her silence and her dark. Only against the isolate Tower there break Low rhythmic rumours of good men to come: Invasive seas of hushed approach, that make Memorial music, would the ear but hark. IX. PORT MEADOW. The plain gives freedom. Hither, from the town, How oft a dreamer and a book of yore Escaped the lamplit Square, and heard no more From Cowley border surge the game’s renown; But bade the vernal sky with spices drown His head by Plato’s in the grass, before Yon oar that’s never old, the sunset oar, At Medley Lock was lain in music down! So seeming far the confines and the crowd, The gross routine, the cares that vex and tire, From this large light, sad thoughts in it, high-driven, Go happier than the inly-moving cloud That lets her vesture fall, a floss of fire, Abstracted, on the ivory hills of heaven. X. MARTYRS’ MEMORIAL.