IM Walter Ramsden OB March 26, 1947, Pembroke College, Oxford

By Sir John Betjeman

Dr Ramsden cannot read The Times obituary to-day

He’s dead.

Let monographs on silk worms by other people be

Thrown away

Unread

For he who best could understand and criticize them, he

Lies clay

In bed.

The body waits in Pembroke College where the ivy taps the panes

All night;

That old head so full of knowledge, that good heart that kept the brains

All right,

Those old cheeks that faintly flushed as the port suffused the veins,

Drain’d white.

Crocus in the Fellows’ Garden, winter jasmine up the wall

Gleam gold.

Shadows of Victorian chimneys on the sunny grassplot fall

Long, cold.

Master, Bursar, Senior Tutor, these, his three survivors, all

Feel old.

They remember, as the coffin to its final obsequations

Leaves the gates,

Buzz of bees in window boxes on their summer ministrations,

Kitchen din,

Cups and plates,

And the getting of bump suppers for the long-dead generations

Coming in,

From Eights.