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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  On Revisiting Trinity College, Cambridge

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Cambridge

On Revisiting Trinity College, Cambridge

By Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809–1885)

I HAVE a debt of my heart’s own to thee,

School of my soul! old lime and cloister shade!

Which I, strange suitor, should lament to see

Fully acquitted and exactly paid.

The first ripe taste of manhood’s best delights,

Knowledge imbibed, while mind and heart agree,

In sweet belated talk on winter nights,

With friends whom growing time keeps dear to me;—

Such things I owe thee, and not only these:

I owe thee the far-beaconing memories

Of the young dead, who, having crossed the tide

Of Life where it was narrow, deep, and clear,

Now cast their brightness from the farther side

On the dark-flowing hours I breast in fear.