CUJUS ANIMÆ PROPICIETUR DEUS.

A quiet, old cathedral folds apart

At Oxford, from the world of colleges

A world of tombs, and shades them in its heart;

Contrasting with the busy knowledges

This wisdom, that they all shall end in peace.—

“Vex you not, slaves of truth! there is release.”

There every window is a monument

Emblazoned: every slab along the pave,

Each effigy with knees devoutly bent,—

Or prone, with folded gauntlets,— is a grave.

Unnoticed down the sands of Kronos run:

Slow move the sombre shadows with the sun.

Hard by a Norman shaft, along the floor

A portraiture on ancient bronze designed

In Academic hood and robes of yore,

Commemorates some by-gone lord of mind.

Mournful the face and dignified the head:

A man who pondered much upon the dead.

Repose unbroken now his dust surrounds,

He is with those whom mortals honor most.

Respect and tender sighs and holy sounds

Of choirs, and the presence of the Holy Ghost

And fellow spirits and shadowy mem'ries dear

Make for his rest a sacred atmosphere.

Sometime a gentle and profound Divine,

Father revered of spiritual sons.

He died. They laid him here. About his shrine,

Of what they wrote this remnant legend runs:

“Nascitur omnis homo peccato mortuus

Una post cineres virtus vivere sola facit. "

There as I breathed the lesson of the dead:

Sudden the rich bells chorussed overhead:

“O be not of the throng ephemeral

To whom to-day is fame, to-morrow fate,

Proud of some robe no statelier than a pall,

Mad for some wreath of cypress funeral —

A phantom generation fatuate.

Stand thou aside and stretch a hand to save,

Virtue alone revives beyond the grave.”