May-Day Song for North Oxford

(Annie Laurie Tune)

Belbroughton Road is bonny, and pinkly bursts the spray

Of prunus and forsythia across the public way,

For a full spring-tide of blossom seethed and departed hence,

Leaving land-locked pools of jonquils by sunny garden fence.

And a constant sound of flushing runneth from windows where

The toothbrush too is airing in this new North Oxford air

From Summerfields to Lynam’s, the thirsty tarmac dries,

And a Cherwell mist dissolveth on elm-discovering skies.

Oh! well-bound Wells and Bridges! Oh! earnest ethical search

For the wide high-table λoγoς of St. C.S. Lewis’s Church.

This diamond-eyed Spring morning my soul soars up the slope

Of a right good rough-cast buttress on the housewall of my hope.

And open-necked and freckled, where once there grazed the cows,

Emancipated children swing on old apple boughs,

And pastel-shaded book rooms bring New Ideas to birth

As the whitening hawthorn only hears the heart beat of the earth.