Poems of To-Day: an Anthology. Various

        Clean of officious fence or hedge,

          Half-wild and wholly tame,

        The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge

          As when the Romans came.

        What sign of those that fought and died

          At shift of sword and sword?

        The barrow and the camp abide,

          The sunlight and the sward.

        Here leaps ashore the full Sou'west

          All heavy-winged with brine,

        Here lies above the folded crest

          The Channel's leaden line;

        And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,

          And here, each warning each,

        The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring

          Along the hidden beach.

        We have no waters to delight

          Our broad and brookless vales—

        Only the dewpond on the height

          Unfed, that never fails,

        Whereby no tattered herbage tells

          Which way the season flies—

        Only our close-bit thyme that smells

          Like dawn in Paradise.

        Here through the strong unhampered days

          The tinkling silence thrills;

        Or little, lost. Down churches praise

          The Lord who made the hills;

        But here the Old Gods guard their round,

          And, in her secret heart,

        The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found

          Dreams, as she dwells, apart.

        Though all the rest were all my share,

          With equal soul I'd see

        Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair,

          Yet none more fair than she.

        Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,

          And I will choose instead

        Such lands as lie 'twixt Rake and Rye,

          Black Down and Beachy Head.

        I will go out against the sun

          Where the rolled scarp retires,

        And the Long Man of Wilmington

          Looks naked toward the shires;

        And east till doubling Rother crawls

          To find the fickle tide,

        By dry and sea-forgotten walls,

          Our ports of stranded pride.

        I will go north about the shaws

          And the deep ghylls that breed

        Huge oaks and old, the which we hold

          No more than "Sussex weed";

        Or south where windy Piddinghoe's

          Begilded dolphin veers,

        And black beside wide-banked Ouse

          Lie down our Sussex steers.

        So to the land our hearts we give

          Till the sure magic strike,

        And Memory, Use, and Love make live

          Us and our fields alike—

        That deeper than our speech and thought,

          Beyond our reason's sway,

        Clay of the pit whence we were wrought

          Yearns to its fellow-clay.

        God gives all men all earth to love,

          But since man's heart is small

        Ordains for each one spot shall prove

          Beloved over all.

        Each to his choice, and I rejoice

          The lot has fallen to me

        In a fair ground—in a fair ground—

          Yea, Sussex by the sea!