Our steeds are ready; whither shall we ride?
To Woodstock, where a woman's jealous hate
Gave her frail rival horrid choice of fate,
And Blenheim rises in majestic pride?
Or to old Cumnor, where false Lei'ster's bride,
Like a fair falcon by the hawker lur'd,
Was in the shades of that grim Place immur'd,
Till, trusting to Love's well-feign'd note, she died?
Or shall we slowly saunter to the wood
Of Bagley, there explore each sylvan glen ;
Or to the Quentin, sport of ages rude,
On the green heights of open Bullenden ?
Lead where you will; I follow, friend, to-night:
All ways are equal to a spirit light.
Not through the Queen of Cities' lordliest street,
Although all passing beautiful its sweep
Of gray old colleges and gables steep,
Where spire, and dome, and bridge, and gateway meet,
Let us now turn our fashionable feet;
But unobserv'd, not unobserving, creep
Down by the bank, where the green willows weep
For Cherwell drown'd in Isis: there a seat
Courts us awhile, till from the farther shore
The ferryman is hail'd to punt us o’er.
Now through the summer fields away, away,
The
grass beside the path brushing our knees;
Haste! for the chapel bell, swung on the breeze,
Pealing too quick return, forbids delay.
The Cathedral of the Woods.
"The groves were God's first temples. Ere men learned To hew the shaft and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them: ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems: in the darkening wood
Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication"-BRYANT.
Come to the woods; I know a solemn glade,
Such as our persecuted fathers chose
For secret worship: whence perchance arose
The vast Cathedral's pattern: there the shade
Falls dim, though checkered thro' the long arcade
By sunlight, which through quivering foliage shows
More glorious than the window's painted rose :
There, side by side, the lithe trees stand arrayed
In pillar'd ranks; boughs interlaced with boughs
In many a vaulted arch the roof uprear,
Its fretwork traced by Nature's cunning hand:
There sing the sweet birds in a choral band:
Like organ music there the wind's low soughs :-
with our dear hearts let us commune here.
"Lo! Discord at the altar dares to stand,
Uplifting toward high heaven her fiery brand."
How richly mellow'd through the painted glass
The tranquil flood of solemn light pours down
Upon each oaken stall's time-polished brown,
On marble chequer'd floor, and desk of brass.
Along the aisle, in spotless surplice, pass
Student and Fellow, while yet lingering swell
The last faint echoes of the vesper bell,
With the same tones that summon'd erst to mass.
Spirit of Unity! keep fast the bands
That bind to thee thy Church! here chiefly rule!
For this thy primal sanctuary: here stands
True Doctrine's very fountain-head and school;
Yet here blind Schism is threatening to divide
Those who should teach thy Gospel side by side*
* These lines were written when Puseyism and the Tractarians were in the ascendant, but they are surely not less apt in these days of Essays and Reviews, and Bishop Colenso.
Chapel Thoughts On the Memory of
I Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter."-KEATS.
"And other days come back to me
With recollected music, though the toue
Is changed and solemn."-BYRON.
"The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more"-WORDSWORTH.
"Then let the pealing organ blow
To the full voiced quire below,
In service high and anthems clear
As may with sweetness through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstacies
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes."-MILTON.
Are those that are by distance made more sweet."-WORDSWORTH. "Music when soft voices die
Vibrates in the memory;
And sweet violets when they sicken
Still live in the sense they quicken."---SHELLEY.
Sweet is the fall of music on the ear,
The song of birds, and soft voice of the rill;
Sweet the breeze-murmur sighing o'er the hill;
Sweet the leaves' rustle in their prime or sear;
Yet sweeter o'er the spirit, and more clear,
Come heavenly harmonies unheard and still.
With such a melody doth Conscience fill
The good man's fainting soul when death is near;
And oft in life a tone celestial swells
Vaguely and in brief snatches, as the wind,
Sweeps o'er Æolian harp-strings, on the mind,
When, in its dream-like hours of rest, it dwells,
Rapt, on the mystic parts of that vast plan,
God's work, where deathless harmony began.
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