MEN AS TOWERS.

It was May morning, and Taffy made one of the group gathered on the roof of Magdalen Tower.  In the groves below and across the river meadows all the birds were singing together.  Beyond the glimmering suburbs, St. Clement’s and Cowley St. John, over the dark rise by Bullingdon Green, the waning moon seemed to stand still and wait, poised on her nether horn.  Below her the morning sky waited, clean and virginal, letting her veil of mist slip lower and lower until it rested in folds upon Shotover.  While it dropped a shaft of light tore through it and smote flashing on the vane high above Taffy’s head, turning the dark side of the turrets to purple and casting lilac shadows on the surplices of the choir.  For a moment the whole dewy shadow of the tower trembled on the western sky, and melted and was gone as a flood of gold broke on the eastward-turned faces.  The clock below struck five and ceased.  There was a sudden baring of heads; a hush; and gently, borne aloft on boys’ voices, clear and strong, rose the first notes of the hymn—­

     “Te Deum Patrem colimus,
      Te laudibus prosequimur,
      Qui corpus cibo reficis,
      Coelesti mentem gratia.”

In the pauses Taffy heard, faint and far below, the noise of cowhorns blown by the street boys gathered at the foot of the tower and beyond the bridge.  Close beside him a small urchin of a chorister was singing away with the face of an ecstatic seraph; whence that ecstasy arose the urchin would have been puzzled to tell.  There flashed into Taffy’s brain the vision of the whole earth lauding and adoring—­ sun-worshippers and Christians, priests and small children; nation after nation prostrating itself and arising to join the chant—­ “the differing world’s agreeing sacrifice.”  Yes, it was Praise that made men brothers; Praise, the creature’s first and last act of homage to his Creator; Praise that made him kin with the angels.  Praise had lifted this tower; had expressed itself in its soaring pinnacles; and he for the moment was incorporate with the tower and part of its builder’s purpose.  “Lord, make men as towers!”—­he remembered his father’s prayer in the field by Tewkesbury, and at last he understood.  “All towers carry a lamp of some kind”—­why, of course they did.  He looked about him.  The small chorister’s face was glowing—­

     “Triune Deus, hominum
      Salutis auctor optime,
      Immensum hoc mysterium
      Ovante lingua canimus!”

Silence—­and then with a shout the tunable bells broke forth, rocking the tower.  Someone seized Taffy’s college cap and sent it spinning over the battlements.  Caps?  For a second or two they darkened the sky like a flock of birds.  A few gowns followed, expanding as they dropped, like clumsy parachutes.  The company—­all but a few severe dons and their friends—­tumbled laughing down the ladder, down the winding stair, and out into sunshine.  The world was pagan after all.