LXXXI
A Dream of New College: to a College Comrade
IN dream I saw the men whom once I knew,
Whom in the by-gone year the Teuton slew,
Or Turk or Bulgar—those who sacrificed
Their lives and all for which their lives they prized—
And they were met as in the happier time
Before the first act of imperial crime,
Within a College garden in the shade
Of what was once a rampart undecayed.
They saw me not: and all were silent; each
Seemed lost in pondering too deep for speech,
As if, though undisdainful, they had nought
To utter for the modes of human thought,
And yet perchance they thought as one would fain
Imagine that they thought, returned again
To find the sacredness of quiet hours
And beauty, time-unravaged, near these towers.
Into the still quadrangle, as one is fain
To bear a cherished poem in the brain,
And music and great phrases that are dear.
Or one might pause—though 'twere not wise—to hear
190
