To a Well-Named Dwelling

Glad old house of lichened stonework,

What I owed you in my lone work,

Noon and night!

Whensoever faint or ailing,

Letting go my grasp and failing,

You lent light.

How by that fair title came you?

Did some forward eye so name you

Knowing that one,

Sauntering down his century blindly,

Would remark your sound, so kindly,

And be won?

Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight,

Bask in April, May, and June-light,

Zephyr-fanned;

Let your chambers show no sorrow,

Blanching day, or stuporing morrow,

While they stand.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“He began to see that the town life was a book of humanity infinitely more palpitating, varied, and compendious than the gown life. These struggling men and women before him were the reality of Christminster, though they knew little of Christ or Minster. That was one of the humours of things. The floating population of students and teachers, who did know both in a way, were not Christminster in a local sense at all.”  (Jude the Obscure)

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