Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie — Read

Bright memories of young poetic pleasure / In free companionship, the loving stress / Of all life-beauty, lull'd in studious leisure, / When every Muse was jocund with excess / Of fine delight and tremulous happiness; / The breath of an indolent unbridled June, / When delicate thought fell from the dreamy moon: / But now strange care, sorrow, and grief oppress. / Robert Bridges

Michael felt glad to think he would start the adventure of Oxford from Paddington. The simplicity of that railway station might faintly mitigate alarms which no amount of previous deliberation could entirely disperse. He remembered how once he had lightly seen off a Cambridge friend from Liverpool Street and, looking back at the suburban tumult of the Great Eastern Railway, he was grateful for the simplicity of Paddington.