Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/125

 Rh

For O in youth she lives, not in her age.

Her soul is with the springtime and the young;

And she absents her from the learned page,

Studious of high histories yet unsung,

More passionately prized than wisdom's book

Because her own. Her faith is in those eyes

That clear into the gape of hell can look,

Putting to proof ancient philosophies

Such as the virgin Muses would rehearse

Beside the silvery, swallow-haunted stream,

Under the grey towers. But immortal verse

Is now exchanged for its immortal theme—

Victory; proud loss; and the enduring mind;

Youth, that has passed all praises, and has won

More than renown, being that which faith divined,

Reality more radiant than the sun.

She gave, she gives, more than all anchored days

Of dedicated lore, of storied art;

And she resigns her beauty to men's gaze

To mask the riches of her bleeding heart. Laurence Binyon

FTEN, on afternoons grey and sombre,

When clouds lie low and dark with rain,

A random bell strikes a chord familiar

And I hear the Oxford chimes again.

Never I see a swift stream running

Cold and full from shore to shore,

But I think of Isis, and remember

The leaping boat and the throbbing oar.