Dr Ramsden cannot read The Times obituary
He’s dead.
Let monographs on silk worms by other people
Thrown
For he who best could understand and criticize them,
Lies
In bed.
The body waits in Pembroke College where the ivy taps the
All night;
That old head so full of knowledge, that good heart that kept the
All right,
Those old cheeks that faintly flushed as the port suffused the veins,
Drain’d white.
Crocus in the Fellows’ Garden, winter jasmine up the
Gleam gold.
Shadows of Victorian chimneys on the sunny grassplot
Long, cold.
Master,
Bursar,
Senior Tutor, these, his three survivors,
Feel old.
They remember, as the coffin to its final
Leaves the gates,
Buzz of bees in window boxes on their summer ministrations,
Kitchen din,
Cups and plates,
And the getting of bump suppers for the long-dead
Coming in,
From Eights.
