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Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
160
And
on
that
moonlit
night
when
I
floated
among
the
vapours
of
these
meadows,
myself
less
than
a
vapour,
I
knew
and
loved
Oxford
as
never
before,
as
never
since.
Yonder,
in
the
Colleges,
was
the
fume
and
fret
of
tragedy--Love
as
Death’s
decoy,
and
Youth
following
her.
What
then?
Not
Oxford
was
menaced.
Come
what
might,
not
a
stone
of
Oxford’s
walls
would
be
loosened,
nor
a
wreath
of
her
vapours
be
undone,
nor
lost
a
breath
of
her
sacred
spirit.
I
floated
up
into
the
higher,
drier
air,
that
I
might,
for
once,
see
the
total
body
of
that
spirit.
There
lay
Oxford
far
beneath
me,
like
a
map
in
grey
and
black
and
silver.
All
that
I
had
known
only
as
great
single
things
I
saw
now
outspread
in
apposition,
and
tiny;
tiny
symbols,
as
it
were,
of
themselves,
greatly
symbolising
their
oneness.
There
they
lay,
these
multitudinous
and
disparate
quadrangles,
all
their
rivalries
merged
in
the
making
of
a
great
catholic
pattern.
And
the
roofs
of
the
buildings
around
them
seemed
level
with
their
lawns.
No
higher
the
roofs
of
the
very
towers.
Up
from
their
tiny
segment
of
the
earth’s
spinning
surface
they
stood
negligible
beneath
infinity.
And
new,
too,
quite
new,
in
eternity;
transient
upstarts.
I
saw
Oxford
as
a
place
that
had
no
more
past
and
no
more
future
than
a
mining-camp.
I
smiled
down.
O
hoary
and
unassailable
mushroom!...
But
if
a
man
carry
his
sense
of
proportion
far
enough,
lo!
he
is
back
at
the
point
from
which
he
started.
He
knows
that
eternity,
as
conceived
by
him,
is
but
an
instant
in
eternity,
and
infinity
but
a
speck
in
infinity.
How
should
they
belittle
the
things
near
to
him?...
Oxford
was
venerable
and
magical,
after
all,
and
enduring.
Aye,
and
not
because
she
would
endure
was
it
the
less
lamentable
that
the
young
lives
within
her
walls
were
like
to
be
taken.
My
equanimity
was
gone;
and
a
tear
fell
on
Oxford.
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