To V. P., About to Visit Oxford

So you will see what I can see no more:
The broad quadrangles where the sunlit sward,
At which you peep through some old oaken door,
Is girt around by stone-work black and scarred;
The sedgy Isis, which the swift Eight cleaves
With mighty stroke, all rippled by the breeze;
The narrow Cherwell, gliding under leaves;
The City’s towers rising o’er the trees.
All this, alas, for me is fading fast,
And dimness seems descending on those walls
While Cherwell slowly glides into the Past.
The throng in cap and gown which filled those halls
Is turning into ghosts, whose names at last
I shall forget, as twilight round me falls.