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e is more direful, child!-- Therein the nations rot when flesh is lord And spirit dies. Such ruin Arts debased Gender, or, gendered long, exasperate more. But thou, rejoice! From this pure centre Arts Unfallen shall breathe their freshness through the land, With kiss like thine healing a nation's wound Year after year successive; listening, each, My sister's organ music in the skies, Prime Art that, challenging not eye but ear, To Faith is nearest, and of Arts on earth For that cause, living soul.' That prophecy Found its accomplishment. In later years, There where of old the Oxen had their Ford, The goodliest city England boasts arose, Mirrored in sacred Isis; like that flood Its youth for aye renewing. Convents first Through stately groves levelled their placid gleam, With cloisters opening dim on garden gay Or moonlit lawn dappled by shadowing deer: Above them soared the chapel's reverent bulk With storied window whence, in hues of heaven, Martyrs looked down, or Confessor, or Saint On tomb of Founder with its legend meek 'Pro anima orate.' Night and day Mounted the Church's ever-varying song Sustained on organ harmonies that well Might draw once more to earth, with wings outspread And heavenly face made heavenlier by that strain, Cecilia's Angel. Of those convents first Was Frideswida's, ruled in later years By Canons Regular, later yet rebuilt By him of York, that dying wept, alas, 'Had I but served my Maker as my king!' To colleges those convents turned; yet still The earlier inspiration knew not change: The great tradition died not: near the bridge From Magdalen's tower still rang the lark-like hymn On May-day morn: high ranged in airy cells, Facing the East, all Sciences, all Arts, Yea, and with these all Virtues, imaged stood, Best imaged stood in no ideal forms, Craft unhistoric of some dreamer's brain, But life-like shapes of plain heroic men Who in their day had fought the fight of Faith, Warriors and sages, poets, saints, and kings, And earned their rest: the long procession paced, Up winding slow the college-girded street To where in high cathedral slept the Saint, Singing its 'Alma Redemptoris Mater,' On August noons, what time the Assumption Feast From pur
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