And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.
Matthew Arnold… inspector of schools, poet, and social critic who warned of, among other things, the dangers of sensationalist journalism and supernatural religion.
The quote about dreaming spires is from his poem Thyrsis. It is a long poem – 1863 words over 240 lines and 24 stanzas.
The lines about the dreaming spires are on lines 19 and 20 at the end of the second stanza.
Arnold wrote the poem as an elegy to his friend and fellow poet, Arthur Clough, who died aged 42 from malaria he contracted in Italy.
In the poem, Arnold describes Clough as Thyrsis, an archetype shepherd-poet of Ancient Greece.
And he describes how he and Clough explored the countryside around Oxford when they were students and he reflects on what happened to their ideals after they left university.
As to what happened to Arthur Clough and his ideals… well he devoted years of his life as the unpaid secretarial assistant to Florence Nightingale so that she could pursue her work in improving hygiene in hospitals.
Here are the first two stanzas of the poem:
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla’s name,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks–
Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men
To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Here came I often, often, in old days–
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,
The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?–
This winter-eve is warm,
Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on copse and briers!
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.
We took the photo of the dreaming spires on a trip to Oxford a few years ago, and you can find the photo in the Cities and Buildings section of The Constructed World theme at Quillcards.
You will also find this photo of The Radcliffe Camera there. The Radcliffe Camera is part of Oxford University and was built to house the Radcliffe Science Library. Quite something, isn’t it.
[The word ‘camera’ is Latin for ‘room’]
