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1902
GOD gave all men all earth to love, | |
| But since our hearts are small, | |
| Ordained for each one spot should prove | |
| Belovèd over all; | |
| That, as He watched Creation’s birth, | 5 |
| So we, in godlike mood, | |
| May of our love create our earth | |
| And see that it is good. | |
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| So one shall Baltic pines content, | |
| As one some Surrey glade, | 10 |
| Or one the palm-grove’s droned lament | |
| Before Levuka’s Trade. | |
| Each to his choice, and I rejoice | |
| The lot has fallen to me | |
| In a fair ground—in a fair ground— | 15 |
| Yea, Sussex by the sea! | |
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| No tender-hearted garden crowns, | |
| No bosomed woods adorn | |
| Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs, | |
| But gnarled and writhen thorn— | 20 |
| Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim, | |
| And, through the gaps revealed, | |
| Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim, | |
| Blue goodness of the Weald. | |
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| Clean of officious fence or hedge, | 25 |
| 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? | 30 |
| The barrow and the camp abide, | |
| The sunlight and the sward. | |
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| Here leaps ashore the full Sou’west | |
| All heavy-winged with brine, | |
| Here lies above the folded crest | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
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| 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 | 45 |
| Which way the season flies— | |
| Only our close-bit thyme that smells | |
| Like dawn in Paradise. | |
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| Here through the strong and shadeless days | |
| The tinkling silence thrills; | 50 |
| 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 | 55 |
| Dreams, as she dwells, apart. | |
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| 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. | 60 |
| 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. | |
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| I will go out against the sun | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| By dry and sea-forgotten walls, | |
| Our ports of stranded pride. | |
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| I will go north about the shaws | |
| And the deep ghylls that breed | |
| Huge oaks and old, the which we hold | 75 |
| No more than Sussex weed; | |
| Or south where windy Piddinghoe’s | |
| Begilded dolphin veers | |
| And red beside wide-bankèd Ouse | |
| Lie down our Sussex steers. | 80 |
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| 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, | 85 |
| Beyond our reason’s sway, | |
| Clay of the pit whence we were wrought | |
| Yearns to its fellow-clay. | |
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| God gives all men all earth to love, | |
| But since man’s heart is small, | 90 |
| 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— | 95 |
| Yea, Sussex by the sea! | |
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