The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats/On Oxford

by John Keats

On Oxford

Charles Armitage Brown, writing to Henry Snook from Hampstead 24 March, 1820, says: 'Tom shall have one of his [Keats's] bits of comic verses,—I met with them only yesterday, but they have been written long ago,—it is a song on the City of Oxford.' The verses were also copied by Keats in a letter to Reynolds, given below on p. 269, as a satirical criticism of Wordsworth.

The Gothic looks solemn,
The plain Doric column
Supports an old Bishop and Crozier;
The mouldering arch,
Shaded o'er by a larch,
Stands next door to Wilson the Hosier.

Vice,—that is, by turns,—
O'er pale faces mourns
The black tassell'd trencher and common hat;
The charity boy sings,
The Steeple-bell rings
And as for the Chancellor—dominat.

There are plenty of trees,
And plenty of ease,
And plenty of fat deer for Parsons;
And when it is venison,
Short is the benison,—
Then each on a leg or thigh fastens.