Bliss lasted for two years and then there was trouble about exams: but Geoffrey Dearmer – for he is my example – had got as much as anyone I ever knew of the real Oxford teaching, which is given by the atmosphere and surroundings and associations and companionships of the place.
Above, the mocking stars Silvered the curving parapet, and clear Cloud-latticed beams o'erflecked the land with bars I, crouching, lay between Tense-listening armies peering through the night, Twin giants bound by tentacles unseen.
For he came As one who offers comradeship deserved, An open ally of the human race, And sniffing at my prostrate form unnerved He licked my face!
A critic who knew him well rated his garden poetry as highly as his war poems, quoting these lines as an example:[9] [...] The fields were loud with bees And drowsy with the wind-stirred meadowsweet.
From bowing trees Fell chatter, and above the garden wall Wide sunflowers beamed at spearing hollyhocks That dared the wind, and scorned the clustered stocks, And bore their laddered blooms high over all.