Читать книгу Poems of To-Day: an Anthology - Various - Страница 35

  God gave all men all earth to love,

    But since our hearts are small,

  Ordained for each one spot should prove

    Beloved over all;

  That as He watched Creation's birth

    So we, in godlike mood,

  May of our love create our earth

    And see that it is good.

  So one shall Baltic pines content,

    As one some Surrey glade,

  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—

    Yea, Sussex by the sea!

  No tender-hearted garden crowns,

    No bosomed woods adorn

  Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,

    But gnarled and writhen thorn—

  Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,

    And through the gaps revealed

  Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim

    Blue goodness of the Weald.

  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!