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Poems for study » Duns Scotus' Oxford » Themes in Duns Scotus' Oxford

The ugliness of modern life

This theme is contained in the second quatrain. Urban sprawl has broken down the strict boundaries of the medieval city. Much as Hopkins liked variegated colours and shades, this new development merely obliterated the true inscape of the city, providing none of its own to substitute.

Mary as a channel of grace

This emphasis is what he praises Duns Scotus for in the last three lines - in effect the climax of the poem, though coming as somewhat of a surprise to most readers. Nothing really leads up to it.

Continuity and tradition

The first quatrain and the first tercet both emphasise that the traditional balance between nature and civilisation is the right one. People have to re-find the balance.

Investigating Duns Scotus' Oxford
  • Is there anything significant in ‘this air I gather and release’?
  • Do you find the last line a climax or rather an anticlimax?
    • Why?
  • Can you see any other themes in the sonnet?
A 4-line stanza, usually rhyming.
A 3-line unit of verse, usually forming part of a sestet. Sometimes it rhymes within itself, sometimes it has the same rhyme scheme as a following tercet.
A sonnet is a poem with a special structure. It has fourteen lines, which are organised in a particular manner, usually characterised by the pattern of rhyming, which changes as the ideas in the poem evolve.

Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-
racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and
town did
Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;

Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural rural keeping--folk, flocks, and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;
Who fired France for Mary without spot.

 
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