I
IMPERIAL Iffley, Cumnor bowered in green,
And Templar Sandford in the boatman’s call,
And sweet-belled Appleton, and Wytham wall
That doth upon adoring ivies lean;
Meek Binsey; Dorchester where streams convene
Bidding on graves her solemn shadow fall;
Clear Cassington that soars perpetual;
Holton and Hampton, and ye towers between:
If one of all in your sad courts that come,
Belovèd and disparted! be your own,
Kin to the souls ye had, while time endures,
Known to each exiled, each estrangèd stone
Home in the quarries of old Christendom,—
Ah, mark him: he will lay his cheek to yours.
II
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 and 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.”