.
Snapshots of Oxford—July 20, 2025
The drowsy wasps that kept me on my toes;
The groups of foreign students herded by;
The constant stop and look, the selfie pose;
The intermittent rain, then hot and dry.
A city with its dreaming spires on view;
The enigmatic Wheatsheaf where I sat;
A pillar box the post office imbue
With colour, through a rainbow rasta hat.
The folk from ’cross the Pond who find it twee;
The local scholars holding forth with flair;
The cobbled streets and lanes with much to see;
The pubs with real ale and English fare.
This famous place of learning, Oxford boasts
Much more than academia’s holy ghosts.
.
.
Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
Interesting perspective of Oxford. For some reason I missed it on my several visits to England. I could do without the wasps.
The wasps were still around two weeks later, though mainly crawling around rubbish bins. This is Oxford during the summer recess, and the place was jam-packed full of tourists. It’s well worth the visit, though. The atmosphere is much friendlier than in London and there’s plenty to see and do.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Roy.
This is a truly scenic sonnet, giving all the varied sights and things that made the speaker’s trip memorable.
Note that the three quatrains are all built of relative clauses, with no main verb governing them. Only the final couplet is a complete sentence with a main verb. I have seen this technique before in other poems, where the poet wishes not to make any direct statement, but only to build up images of what he has experienced in a given time or place. Here, the final couplet becomes more of an abstract judgment on Oxford, added as a follow-up to the descriptive images.
One question: my Noo Yawk pronunciation of the word “real” is monosyllabic (REEL, like the fishing rod apparatus). In this sonnet it seems that “real” in line 12 needs to be scanned as two syllables (REE-ul). Is this the accepted U.K. pronunciation?
I loved my visits to Oxford. It is a bibliophile’s paradise.
Thanks for the extensive comment, Joseph. ‘Real’ would be two syllables in my part of England. It’s one of those words, like ‘fire’, that tends to be one or two syllables to my ear depending where it appears in the iambic foot.
I spent a while in Blackwell’s bookshop on both my recent excursions to Oxford. The basement area is vast, and reminded me of the memorable scene in the Good, The Bad and the Ugly when Eli Wallach is running around the huge cemetery looking for a particular grave with the gold hidden in it. I did eventually get all the books I wanted, but I had great sympathy for ‘The Ugly’ by the end of it.
The pub, the Wheatsheaf, where I wrote the poem was interesting. Hidden away from the main drag in a side alley, its punters were more the rough and readier locals of Oxford, as opposed to the timber-framed and other old style pubs, where the posher sounding locals, academics and quite a few American tourists tend to be found.
I was hoping the final couplet was more a contrast of the summer free-for-all feel of when I was there in July (the picture of the ‘Bridge of Sighs’, Hertford College, gives an impression of the extent of the tourism, verging on over-tourism, in some parts of the town), rather than a judgment on the world of academia which exists there much of the rest of the year.
Again, thanks for reading and commenting.
Paul, your experience brings back memories to me of strolling the campus of Trinity College in Dublin.
Your sonnet flows very well!
Thanks for reading and commenting, Margaret. It was a special day in a month when I worked virtually every day, 10+ hours per day.
I’ve never been to Oxford but you certainly paint a ‘colorful’ picture of an old world view, juxtaposed
in the 21st century. Your verse and old world language woven in the reality of today strike a meaningful chord.
Thank you for reading, Paulette. That contrast of the old and the new was what I was aiming at.
Paul, you truly make me want to make my long-desired pilgrimage to England– and Oxford would definitely be among the sites!!! I admire your final couplet and the use of “holy ghosts”– bold and inventive. I love it when we can twist and tweak a well-known phrase or saying in novel and creative ways. Well done!
Thanks, for reading and commenting, Theresa. I was lucky to be off work that day and could have lounged around. So glad I opted to join the Oxford excursion.
Thanks for the album, Paul! There’s always much to see and to recall. I got out our most recent album, in which my husband had taken care to picture the shop of M. Feller, Son and Daughter, Traditional Butchers and Specialists in Organic Meat, located in the covered market. Don’t; remember the Wheatsheaf; do you recommend it? Is it hard to find? On our first trip more than forty years ago, we were told the best pubs were the Perch and the Trout. Both had to be reached by walking through fields well ornamented with cow dung. And the Trout, at least, was so far away it was no longer in the town of Oxford!
The Bear, on the other side of the High Street from the Covered Market, is a little treasure, and reputedly one of the oldest pubs in Britain. The Wheatsheaf, located in Wheatsheaf Yard, is perhaps a bit too rough for the average Transatlantic traveller, though there’s a more personable establishment situated in the adjacent lane.
You have some wonderful memories of Oxford.
Thanks for this superb descriptive sonnet, Paul. Oxford is still one of my favourites cities – and nearly always busy, crowded and noisy. You would likely find Cambridge more spacious – and perhaps a little more reserved.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Morrison. I was in Cambridge some years back and don’t recall it being as lively as Oxford.