Visiting Oxford for the third time, I’m struck by how much the Oxford of my imagination–the one cultivated by books like Gaudy Night, Brideshead Revisited, and A Severe Mercy–seems to have shrunk. The city, even since 2010 when I was here last, is slowly being overlaid with larger shopping malls, increased tdouble-decker bus traffic, and tourism.
And yet, as Hopkins might say, Oxford is never spent. It’s still possible to walk along the street, turn into a small doorway, and suddenly find yourself in a world where flowers grow thickly in neat rows, ivy that trace the contours of carefully carved stone walls, deer who wander and congregate in meadows, and trees whose size indicate an age beyond living memory. The walls around these gardens and courtyards may continue to thicken and grow uglier, but the contrast only serves to heighten the beauty of the space within.
Nicholas H. Dalbey 