Sussex

God gave all men all earth to love,But since our hearts are small,Ordained for each one spot should proveBeloved over all;That as He watched Creation’s birth,So we, in godlike mood,May of our love create our earthAnd see that it is good.

So one shall Baltic pines content,As one some Surrey glade,Or one the palm-grove’s droned lamentBefore Levuka’s trade.Each to his choice, and I rejoiceThe lot has fallen to meIn a fair ground--in a fair ground--Yea, Sussex by the sea!

No tender-hearted garden crowns,No bosomed woods adornOur blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,But gnarled and writhen thorn--Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,And through the gaps revealedBelt upon belt, the wooded, dimBlue goodness of the Weald.

Clean of officious fence or hedge,Half-wild and wholly tame,The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edgeAs when the Romans came.What sign of those that fought and diedAt shift of sword and sword?The barrow and the camp abide,The sunlight and the sward.

Here leaps ashore the full Sou’westAll heavy-winged with brine,Here lies above the folded crestThe Channel’s leaden line;And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,And here, each warning each,The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ringAlong the hidden beach.

We have no waters to delightOur broad and brookless vales--Only the dewpond on the heightUnfed, that never fails,Whereby no tattered herbage tellsWhich way the season flies--Only our close-bit thyme that smellsLike dawn in Paradise.

Here through the strong unhampered daysThe tinkling silence thrills;Or little, lost, Down churches praiseThe Lord who made the hills:But here the Old Gods guard their round,And, in her secret heart,The heathen kingdom Wilfrid foundDreams, as she dwells, apart.

Though all the rest were all my share,With equal soul I’d seeHer nine-and-thirty sisters fair,Yet none more fair than she.Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,And I will choose insteadSuch lands as lie ’twixt Rake and Rye,Black Down and Beachy Head.

I will go out against the sunWhere the rolled scarp retires,And the Long Man of WilmingtonLooks naked toward the shires;And east till doubling Rother crawlsTo find the fickle tide,By dry and sea-forgotten walls,Our ports of stranded pride.

I will go north about the shawsAnd the deep ghylls that breedHuge oaks and old, the which we holdNo more than ‘Sussex weed’;Or south where windy Piddinghoe’sBegilded dolphin veers,And black beside wide-bankèd OuseLie down our Sussex steers.

So to the land our hearts we giveTill the sure magic strike,And Memory, Use, and Love make liveUs and our fields alike--That deeper than our speech and thought,Beyond our reason’s sway,Clay of the pit whence we were wroughtYearns 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 proveBeloved over all.Each to his choice, and I rejoiceThe lot has fallen to meIn a fair ground--in a fair ground--Yea, Sussex by the sea!