Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OXFORD BELLS: PART 2; TO RHODA BROUGHTON, IN MEMORY OF HER SISTER, by MARGARET LOUISA WOODS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OXFORD BELLS: PART 2; TO RHODA BROUGHTON, IN MEMORY OF HER SISTER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The bells their loud unchanging task fulfil
Last Line: The coronal of this autumnal verse.
Alternate Author Name(s): Woods, Mrs. Margaret Louisa Bradley
Subject(s): Bells; Memory; Oxford, England


I

The bells their loud unchanging task fulfil
Bearing upon the ear and on the brain
With a remindful resonance, until

Half could I wish their oracles again
Silent for me, as once they were; and yet
More than remembrance is it mortal pain

To watch that still, pursuing sea whose fret
Washes our footsteps out, and one by one,
O'er everything we were and would regret
Sweeps the smooth waters of oblivion.

II

So let their incantation still sound on!
Still shall new hours the old fair hours repeat,
Bringing them back who with the hours are gone.

There is a summer silence in the street,
Where half the shouldering gables catch the sun,
Their bloomy windows fragrant in the heat—

Surely 'tis but a little way to run
And cross your threshold, then a shadowy space,
Reach the gay garden and yourself and one

Standing amid her flowers. In many a place
Does this white moon of May find multitude
Of flowers more beautiful than her own face.

What long glades pale with hawthorn, what bedewed
Soft slopes o'erspangled with the cowslip sheen,
And nested primroses, a late lone brood!

Through nets of delicate shadow she hath seen
The sea-blue splendour of wild-hyacinths spread
Up Wytham woods, under the first fresh green;

O'er foamy orchards her young light is shed
And flash of wilding blossom and the pride
Of country gardens, richly tapestried

With royal tulips, sumptuously dyed
Purple and gold and sanguine, striped and smeared,
Or pure in their keen colour as a bride

Is in her whiteness. Yet as oft, she peered
Over the black tower, smiling silverly,
In yonder strip of city earth appeared

As crowded wealth of flowers as she might see.
By ample lawns o'erflowed with ministrant air
Or hollow coverts none explore save she.

For once it had your blithe and debonnair
And 'lucky-fingered' lady, eve and morn
To visit every bloom with happy care.

She was a votary of that later born
Young Muse, whom not less holy than the Nine,
Some brown-haired Dryad bore to the unshorn

Bright god; who now a hierophant divine,
Comes treading with fair feet invisible,
Choosing herself the priestess and the shrine.

Such was that clear-eyed lady, who knew well
Out of the earth's dark homes to call up store
Of heaven-bright beauty and a wafting smell

Sweeter than incense.
All the bells restore,
Even to the moontide shadow where we read
Those ardent leaves, plucked from a heart's live core—

Flower-heart, whose burning petals wide dispread,
With scarlet ruin did enrich the mould,
Where still they glow, though long the flower is dead.

III

Tranquil and far, with murmur manifold,
On Autumn eves the bells their power resume,
Lone in the quiet sunset's waning gold.

They conjure up a green embowered room,
Where through the open casement there would swing
A sound of bells into the fire-lit gloom.

Oft have they chid me there, late lingering,
Warm in its lady's gracious atmosphere,
While easily as flames or fountains spring,

That sparkling spirit of yours threw out its clear
Lightnings of mirth, and the swift talk would flit
Flashing its wings through laughter everywhere.

How small a boon I brought you for your wit!
Only perchance some woodbine wreath of song,
Or hedgerow tale, dark though you smiled on it.

And even as I musing passed along
That street, you laid her to her near repose.
There by the river oft shall roses throng—

Yet since I brought no garland such as blows
In dewy May for her that loved the May,
From other fields, where Herb Remembrance grows,

I bring the unsheaved harvest of the way;
Its purple leaves some dimmer dews immerse,
I pluck, and on your living breast I lay
The coronal of this Autumnal verse.





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