In Grantchester their skins are white; They bathe by day, they bathe by night; The women there do all they ought; The men observe the Rules of Thought. They love the Good; they worship Truth; They laugh uproariously in youth; (And when they get to feeling old, They up and shoot themselves, I’m told).... Ah God! to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester! To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten Unforgettable, unforgotten River-smell, and hear the breeze Sobbing in the little trees. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand, Still guardians of that holy land? The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, The yet unacademic stream? Is dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain? ... oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea? *The Funeral of Youth: Threnody* The day that _Youth_ had died, There came to his grave-side, In decent mourning, from the county’s ends, Those scattered friends Who had lived the boon companions of his prime, And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted, In feast and wine and many-crown’d carouse, The days and nights and dawnings of the time When _Youth_ kept open house, Nor left untasted Aught of his high emprise and ventures dear, No quest of his unshar’d— All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar’d, Followed their old friend’s bier. _Folly_ went first, With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers’d; And after trod the bearers, hat in hand— _Laughter_, most hoarse, and Captain _Pride_ with tanned And martial face all grim, and fussy _Joy_, Who had to catch a train, and _Lust_, poor, snivelling boy; These bore the dear departed. Behind them, broken-hearted, Came _Grief_, so noisy a widow, that all said, "Had he but wed Her elder sister _Sorrow_, in her stead." And by her, trying to soothe her all the time, The fatherless children, _Colour_, _Tune_, and _Rhyme_ (The sweet lad _Rhyme_), ran all-uncomprehending. Then, at the way’s sad ending, Round the raw grave they stay’d. Old _Wisdom_ read, In mumbling tone, the Service for the Dead. There stood _Romance_, The furrowing tears had mark’d her rougèd cheek; Poor old _Conceit_, his wonder unassuag’d; Dead _Innocency’s_ daughter, _Ignorance_; And shabby, ill-dress’d _Generosity_; And _Argument_, too full of woe to speak;