Envoy

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.