Sonnet XX

Go, bricked monoliths, you lofty towers
Down into the annals of time, grow roots deep
As the Oxonian spires that still sleep
Amid the young and old: bright minds like ours.
You, from whose bowels spring future powers,
Laurier, not the bells of Magdalen keep
Within your walls. No laureled ivies creep
To clothe thy cloistered, learnéd bowers.
Short years we spend enthralled for greater cause
Yet oft will wane the disillusioned mind
From former dreams. Always we must give pause,
Searching out that verberant core, to find
What drives the soul, what sinks heart-deep the claws
Of passion, what mud heals the ever blind.

Photography by Ira Joel Haber