Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO OXFORD, by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO OXFORD, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: New-dated from the terms that reappear
Last Line: And undivulged love does overflow.
Subject(s): Oxford University


New-dated from the terms that reappear,
More sweet-familiar grows my love to thee,
And still thou bind'st me to fresh fealty
With long-superfluous ties, for nothing here
Nor elsewhere can thy sweetness unendear.
This is my park, my pleasaunce; this to me
As public is my greater privacy,
All mine, yet common to my every peer.

Those charms accepted of my inmost thought,
The towers musical, quiet-walled grove,
The window-circles, these may all be sought
By other eyes, and other suitors move,
And all like me may boast, impeached not,
Their special-general title to thy love.

Thus, I come underneath this chapel-side,
So that the mason's levels, courses, all
The vigorous horizontals, each way fall
In bows above my head, as falsified
By visual compulsion, till I hide
The steep-up roof at last behind the small
Eclipsing parapet; yet above the wall
The sumptuous ridge-crest leave to poise and ride.

None besides me this bye-ways beauty try.
Or if they try it, I am happier then:
The shapen flags and drilled holes of sky,
Just seen, may be to many unknown men
The one peculiar of their pleasured eye,
And I have only set the same to pen.

As Devonshire letters, earlier in the year
Than we in the East dare look for buds, disclose
Smells that are sweeter-memoried than the rose,
And pressed violets in the folds appear,

So is it with my friends, I note, to hear
News from Belleisle, even such a sweetness blows
(I know it, knowing not) across from those
Meadows to them inexplicably dear.

'As when a soul laments, which hath been blest' --
I'll cite no further what the initiate know.
I never saw those fields whereon their best
And undivulged love does overflow.







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