Laurence Binyon

Oxford in War-Time

WHAT alters you, familiar lawn and tower,
Arched alley, and garden green to the grey wall
With crumbling crevice and the old wine-red flower,
Solitary in summer sun? for all

Dream vs. reality

Binyon uses 'dream' twice in eight lines—not as metaphor for beauty, but for **absence**. The familiar place feels unreal because the people who gave it meaning are gone.

Is like a dream: I tread on dreams! No stir
Of footsteps, voices, laughter! Even the chime
Of many memoried bells is lonelier
In this neglected ghostliness of Time.
What stealing touch of separation numb
Absents you? Yet my heart springs up to adore
The shrining of your soul, that is become
Nearer and oh, far dearer than before.
It is as if I looked on the still face

Oxford as Mother

The shift from describing a place to describing a person. Binyon personifies the university itself as a mother whose sons are at war—this is the poem's central image.

Oxford as Mother

The shift from describing a place to describing a person. Binyon personifies the university itself as a mother whose sons are at war—this is the poem's central image.

Of a Mother, musing where she sits alone.
She is with her sons, she is not in this place;
She is gone out into far lands unknown.
Because that filled horizon occupies
Her heart with mute prayer and divining fear,
Therefore her hands so calm lie, and her eyes
See nothing; and men wonder at her here:
But far in France; on the torn Flanders plain;

Geographic specificity

Binyon names actual WWI theaters: France, Flanders, Sinai, Macedonia, Tigris. This isn't abstract war—he's mapping where Oxford's sons are dying.

Geographic specificity

Binyon names actual WWI theaters: France, Flanders, Sinai, Macedonia, Tigris. This isn't abstract war—he's mapping where Oxford's sons are dying.

By Sinai; in the Macedonian snows;
The fly-plagued sands of Tigris, heat and rain;
On wandering water, where the black squall blows
Less danger than the bright wave ambushes,
She bears it out. All the long day she bears,

Virtue departed

Oxford's 'virtue' (both moral excellence and vital force) has left the buildings. What remains is physically present but spiritually emptied.

Virtue departed

Oxford's 'virtue' (both moral excellence and vital force) has left the buildings. What remains is physically present but spiritually emptied.

And the sudden hour of instant challenges
To act, that searches all men, no man spares.
She is with her sons, leaving a virtue gone
Out of her sacred places; what she bred
Lives other life than this, that sits alone,
Though still in dream starrily visited!
For O in youth she lives, not in her age.

Youth over age

Binyon argues Oxford's true self is **not** in its ancient learning but in its young men. The university's identity has shifted from institution to the lives it sent to war.

Her soul is with the springtime and the young;
And she absents her from the learned page,
Studious of high histories yet unsung,
More passionately prized than wisdom's book
Because her own. Her faith is in those eyes
That clear into the gape of hell can look,
Putting to proof ancient philosophies
Such as the virgin Muses would rehearse
Beside the silvery, swallow-haunted stream,
Under the grey towers. But immortal verse

Exchanging immortal verse

The university abandons its role as preserver of 'immortal verse'—classical poetry and philosophy—because the students embody something more urgent: living heroism.

Is now exchanged for its immortal theme—
Victory; proud loss; and the enduring mind;
Youth, that has passed all praises, and has won
More than renown, being that which faith divined,
Reality more radiant than the sun.
She gave, she gives, more than all anchored days

Sacrifice as gift

'She gave, she gives'—Oxford didn't lose her sons, she **gave** them. Binyon reframes military sacrifice as the university's ultimate offering, surpassing all art and scholarship.

Sacrifice as gift

'She gave, she gives'—Oxford didn't lose her sons, she **gave** them. Binyon reframes military sacrifice as the university's ultimate offering, surpassing all art and scholarship.

Of dedicated lore, of storied art;
And she resigns her beauty to men's gaze

Beauty masking grief

The final turn: Oxford maintains her outward dignity ('resigns her beauty to men's gaze') while her heart bleeds. Composure becomes a form of heroism.

Beauty masking grief

The final turn: Oxford maintains her outward dignity ('resigns her beauty to men's gaze') while her heart bleeds. Composure becomes a form of heroism.

To mask the riches of her bleeding heart.
Laurence Binyon
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Oxford as Bereaved Mother: The Poem's Central Conceit

CONTEXT Binyon published this in 1915, early in WWI. Oxford had already lost hundreds of students and alumni; the university became a symbol of national sacrifice. Binyon himself was too old for military service but worked as a war poet and propagandist.

The poem doesn't describe Oxford's buildings or traditions directly. Instead, Binyon invents a metaphorical Oxford—a mother figure whose sons are scattered across every WWI theater (France, Sinai, Macedonia, Mesopotamia). This personification allows him to explore a specific kind of wartime loss: the hollowing-out of institutions by the absence of youth.

Notice how Binyon moves from concrete observation ('familiar lawn and tower') to psychological condition ('It is as if I looked on the still face / Of a Mother'). The poem's power lies in this shift: a place becomes a person, and that person's emotional state becomes the actual subject. Oxford doesn't mourn; she bears it—endures with composure while her heart breaks.

Redefining Oxford's Worth: Learning Surrendered to Living

Binyon makes a provocative argument about what Oxford actually is. Traditionally, the university represents accumulated wisdom—'the learned page,' 'Studious of high histories,' 'ancient philosophies,' 'immortal verse.' But he claims this is secondary to what Oxford truly gives: her young men.

The crucial lines are: 'But immortal verse / Is now exchanged for its immortal theme— / Victory; proud loss; and the enduring mind.' Binyon isn't saying war is better than poetry. He's saying that in wartime, the living embodiment of courage matters more than the texts about courage. The students who face 'the gape of hell' are putting philosophy to its ultimate test.

This inversion—where youth and action replace books and history—runs through the final stanzas. Oxford 'resigns her beauty to men's gaze / To mask the riches of her bleeding heart.' She sacrifices her identity as a place of learning to become something else: a symbol of maternal sacrifice. The poem asks whether this trade is worth it. Binyon's answer, implied through the poem's reverence, is yes—but the cost is the erasure of what made Oxford Oxford.