A thousand tongues

Julia ♦ August 7, 2024 ♦ 2 Comments

From the tower, Radcliffe Camera and the “dreaming spires” of Oxford, June 2017

“There is an air about it, resonant of joy and hope: it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart: it waves its mighty shadow over the imagination…and points with prophetic fingers to the sky.” — William Hazlitt, describing Oxford

This was my third visit to Oxford, but the first time I stayed more than three days. The weather was as close to perfect as I could have wished, and I walked to my heart’s content and more, averaging 8 miles a day. Much of that walking was part of class sessions or group activities, but a fair amount of it was my own exploration. There were some great class outings, and none more memorable than climbing the narrow spiral staircase in the 13th century tower of the University Church.

The tower was so cramped that a few visitors who were there that day felt, on seeing inside it, too claustrophobic to even try to climb it. Those of us who did had no regrets; the view from the top was breathtaking, and extended almost 360° to give an unparalleled view of the city. Reading Hazlitt’s description of Oxford, I immediately thought of that panorama.

I can’t think of any thriving city of such relatively small size where so many of the buildings have been in use for so long. Yet there is nothing that feels antiquated about Oxford, at least not to me. Perhaps the presence of so many colleges with their youthful population explains part of the animated atmosphere, but I think that is only a part of the appeal.

As is my travel habit, I spent much time exploring the residential areas just outside the city center, riding the buses with the locals and roaming around the grocery stores hunting for snacks and teas I can’t get at home. Like the city center, these places were modern, yet set in charming historic neighborhoods where I was tempted to stop and take photos so often that always ran out of time before I saw as much as I wanted to see.

I’m a great believer, though, that we don’t need to go someplace far-off and exotic to find fascinating things. Most places will speak to us with a thousand tongues, if we stop to listen. Here’s wishing us all a week of tuning in to the resonance of joy and hope wherever we find ourselves.

This post was first published seven years ago. I’m writing this updated comment from Oxford, but by the time you read this, I will have just wrapped up my fourth summer session on my sixth visit here (the first two being when my son Drew was here for Michaelmas Term in 2005). I confess that each year I spend a bit more time in the grocery stores and on the local buses than at the famed tourist spots, having seen many of them more than once by now. But the appeal of Oxford endures for me, a heady combination of centuries of tradition, new faces of all ages and nationalities, invigorating ideas in every discipline, and the legacy that permeates a place that has hosted some of the greatest minds in Western history. 

The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.