Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OXFORD BELLS: PART 1, by MARGARET LOUISA WOODS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OXFORD BELLS: PART 1, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The watchers in the everlasting towers
Last Line: Till in the young dawn oxford towers are bright.
Alternate Author Name(s): Woods, Mrs. Margaret Louisa Bradley
Subject(s): Bells; Oxford, England


I

THE watchers in the everlasting towers,
Blind watchers of bright heaven, the bells who own
No changing years, but the unchanging hours—

Listen! They strike: a sinister monotone
Deep as all time. The same sound and who hears
Could be the same, did she not hear alone.

Those iron tongues have portioned out our years
Indifferently, with fateful rumours blown
About the solemn spires and aëry tiers

Of clustered pinnacles, and far unknown
Utterance that communes with the void. It fills
The valley broadening round their ancient throne,
Out to the edges of the violet hills.

II

From tower to tower eternally they call
O'er the grey windings of the storied town,
Its large lawns, set in many a time-rich wall

And cool with broad tree-shadows. Floating down,
Everywhere have I listened to that chime,
Heard it high-laden with the summer crown

Of the lone reaches, heard it when the rime
Broidered the fretted stone and flung light lace
Of silver on the boughs, when winter's prime

Over the frozen flood in whirling race
Swept out and scattered wide our joyous crew,
Like birds that beat some viewless bound of space

On wheeling wings; till deep and deeper blue
Gathered on Oxford towers, and far away,
Ere up the stream in swinging line we flew,
Through the black trees burned out the crimson day.

III

Again that hour has struck, has dropped again
Into the gulf whence nothing may resurge,
Yet lo! with hollow iteration vain,

Itself the phantom and the thaumaturge,
The old long dead inevitable hour
'Neath the emerging stars doth re-emerge.

Once heedlessly, as ignorant of their power
A wizard's child might hear such dooming spells
As make the dead leap up and brave men cower

Muttering hoarse prayers, so have I heard the bells.
Heard in the green hush of some long-drawn bower,
Walks where a legendary shade compels

Day to its hue, where slow, with mirrored tower,
Garden and bridge that waver as it goes,
Cherwell to Isis bears its meadowy dower,

Strewn hawthorn petals, shatterings of the rose,
Serene as it could know their garland bright
Year after year renews, and even as those,

Brings to the winding wave its joyous freight
Of eager youth to push adventurous prows
Far up its ancient ways with new delight,
And dream old dreams under its haunted boughs.

IV

The city of immortal youth is wreathing
Her grey walls with young garlands, mauve and amber
And white, blossoms from hidden gardens seething
Surprise her streets, round the open windows clamber

Blossoms, as though to list young laughter there;
The very soul of her sweet stones is breathing
In a warm and subtle fragrance everywhere.

She with herself contends, as in old story
Fair goddesses contend which is most fair,
Whether this luminous and transitory

Loveliness of the Spring, this happy flood
Of unbound youth, clothe her with her great glory,
Or the still, golden centuries that brood,

A gorgeous mist, about her. Age on age
Of men that on this Oxford earth have stood
As we to-day, wrought us our heritage

Of beauty, made her a lamp among the nations,
Shrine of far thoughts and world-long pilgrimage.
We are roofed with their rich dreams, imaginations

Of theirs first visioned these triumphant towers,
Ere yet their hands builded, the inspirations
Of old immortal souls vibrate in ours.

To be made a son of hers is to be made
Scion of an illustrious line, ancient, that dowers
Its heirs with halls majestical, arrayed

In beauty beyond the pomp of palaces;
The high tradition, the ancestral shade
Of noble minds to inherit, centuries'

Hoarded, unscheduled, nameless wealth at leisure
To have for heart's contentment—this it is
To be her son and hold in trust her treasure.

What coward hands are ours that hold this trust
Of hers to-day! Blind hearts with a false measure
Weigh triumphingly some petty gain, some lust

For gilded gingerbread and the banal stare
Of modern streets against her beauty august—
This joy o' the world and unborn Time, this rare

Masterwork of a city. Men profane
Blast her essential beauty, unaware
Of what they strike at, smile and strike again.

But here where yet no horror flaunts, no scar
Defaces, pause, you who to this heart's fane,
Dreamed of, desired, come from the western star.

Here yet her perfect street's pure curve defies
Its violators. Here the vanished far
Dead centuries look into your living eyes.

Still is her street this morn of early May,
Slender and blond against the blue doth rise
Her lily tower, fronting the high noonday

Queen's, All Souls' shine, one vivid tree is lending
Its blot of glowing shadow, across the way
Loom darkly battlements, at the curve's ending

The memorable church uplifts her spire.
In the empty street what viewless crowds are blending!
What shades come forth! Young Shelley to enquire

Of the soul's immortality; from under
The same dark arch rolls in his sombre attire
Great Johnson's bulk, breathing a mellow thunder.

The madcap Prince runs by and does not mark
The sculptured souls he shall from bodies sunder
In piteous War, those lords and lieges stark

"Drenched with Death's bitter bowl," nor does he see
His fated crown, nor the proud-stalking dark
Remorseful ghost of mitred Chichele.

By Magdalen gate Boy Gibbon airs his frown
And sauntering from her Grove, slow passes he
Of the quiet smile. Scholars in scarlet gown

Mingle with frocked Friar and hooded Master,
And Hark! from the narrow lanes of the packed town
Sweeps a wild crew, singing how Earth has cast her

Mantle of winter, thrumming viol-strings,
Shouting and dancing fast and ever faster,
Horns on their heads, with garlands of green Spring's

Burgeon enwound, they rush, drunken with youth,
On to St. Mary's. Then her tocsin sounds.
Gone is the happy riot of boy and blooth,

And locked in a fierce match there press and reel
Backwards and forwards, men from shop and booth
And tonsured gownsmen, blood spurts on the steel,

An arrow sings—a yell—a bitter groan—
'Tis gone! Only God's silver trumpets peal
Pure from the great St. Mary's memoried stone.

Those voices die. Awaking from the dream,
So hushed the modern scene, so calm and lone
The street appears, this Oxford well may seem

A dead place, where alone a dead Past dwells.
Hush! 'Tis an hour strikes o'er her sleeping stream,
Tower unto tower calls with a clang of bells.

Behold her stream is flowing, her stream of life,
From every arched gate it swiftly swells,
From narrow lanes that have echoed to the strife

And madcap mirth of men long passed away,
Till all the street with Spring and Youth is rife.
Hurrying or sauntering on they pass or stay

Their feet on time-worn steps, a jubilant crowd,
Electric with young radiant life, in play
Of body and brain eager and fresh and proud.

Grey quadrangles are echoing in the clear
Light to their voices, answering laughter loud
Rings from the open casements. Far and near

They are scattering to the river and the vernal
Wide meadows, and their hearts are high of cheer
As though Springtime and Youth were things eternal.

They have swift thoughts that sweep to every wind,
Conquerors of earth, seeking by paths supernal
Each old unconquered Sphinx, assured to find

At length the answer to her challenging.
The heart of the unborn Age beats in their mind,
The air of the rising tide with salt sting

Blows round these Oxford towers. She is not dead,
She is no corpse engarlanded with Spring,
Her ancient glory for pall above her spread,

She is alive perpetually, ay more,
She is forever young and on her head
The light of every dawn. The charm she bore

Is hers, her potent secret is the same
While yet her unwearied bells in solemn sooth
The golden spousals of her spirit proclaim,
The kiss of the crowned Past and spectred Youth.

V

Dawn and high day, wan visitings of light
Out of the haunting moon, come to the bells,
Heaven's horologe turns in their darkling sight.

Blind necromancers, from their hollow cells
Float forth the eyeless ghosts of all hours dead
With voices hidden as the sigh in shells.

The living hour leaps clangorous overhead
To living ears. A thin ethereal
Long sound pursues, the sweep of pinions spread,

Rushing they knew not whither, and the call
Of the oblivious ghosts, wild whispering
To dust of unremembered burial.

But I have heard them, since with folded wing
One wandered ghost her former pathway found,
One blind, blind ghost that knew not anything

Of change, but with her filmy hair enwound
Mine eyes, and closely murmuring, filled my sense
With the enchantment of that fading sound.

Ah, faded, gone! Yet had its effluence
Brooded about my soul and learned me more,
Had not ill-friending chance scattered it hence,

Dispersing much that companied of yore
A spirit the world's business doth subdue
'To that it works in'. So that Hour forbore

To come again and whisper all she knew
Of those deep seas of Life through which our own
Fresh current flows.
The ancient hours renew

Their solemn solitary undertone;
And I do hear them, yet as one who hears
A talk confused in a tongue half known,

With hints of roaring battle, hopes and fears
And festival and music and shrill play,
Of loves forgotten and forgotten tears,

And one grey murmur under arches grey—
The sigh of cloistral hours that fain would tell
Of how they stole and stole long lives away,
Issueless, void, alike, innumerable.

VI

I hear the incantation of the bells,
And since that Hour made me her neophyte,
I know what occult power within them dwells
To mock at Time's inviolable might.

A power to make invisible things seen,
And tumult calm and morning in dull night,
To set the day with stars, and like a screen

Rolled back, the curtain of a peopled stage,
Uplift the tenuous moment's painted scene
From life's loud pageant and mute pilgrimage.

VII

Wherefore in ways familiar I behold
Shapes that are not and voiceless greetings greet;
And often when the sullen midnight tolled

Makes sound of hurrying footsteps in the street,
I hear not these but other footsteps fall,
In the hush night a sound of many feet.

Away! Away! Ah, whither pass they all,
Hastening into the dark so crowdedly
And scattering there, until the gradual

Silence resumes them? Yet their echoes cry
'Away'! From shrine and sculptured pinnacle
The crownless images make low reply.

"Away!" they murmur, "Lest our mantle chill
Fall on your lightsome limbs, our fillets bind
Your charmed brows, with subtle power to kill

The adventurous keen ardours of the mind
And tame the resolute will."
Forth are they driven
Reluctantly, they are strewn to every wind,

Under all stars that circle in wide heaven—
And still on every wind they will return,
Her sons to whom she who forgets has given

A charm whereby they must remembrance learn.
They will return to her through dark and day,
Ghosts of the living, steal out of the stern

Stress of the world, and come the viewless way,
Revisiting these haunts. A mingled flight
They hasten, whether from some secluded gray

Village mid English fields, or the fierce light
Of Indian suns, or Northern waste of snow.
I hear their silken wings brush through the night

Faintly, as round these sounding towers they flow.
The bells hold converse with them in the height,
Speak to the quiet slumberers below,

The steadfast stars and the processions white
Of wavering mist that through the valley go,
Till in the young dawn Oxford towers are bright.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net