SUSSEX GODS.
I have been told, and do not doubt,
That Devon lanes are dim with trees,
And shagged with fern, and loved of bees,
And all with roses pranked about;
I do believe that other-where
The woods are green, the meadows fair.
And woods, I know, have always been
The haunt of fairies, good or grim;
There the knight-errant hasted him;
There Bottom found King Oberon's Queen;
The Enchanted Castle always stood
Deep in the shadow of a wood.
But I know upland spirits too
Who love the shadeless downs to climb;
There, in the far-off fabled time,
Men called them when the moon was new,
And built them little huts of stone
With briar and thistle over-grown.
The trees are few and do not bend
To make a whispering swaying arch;
They are the elder and the larch,
Who have the north-east wind for friend,
And shield them from his bluff salute
With elbow kinked and moss-girt root.
There, when the clear Spring sunset dies
Like a great pearl dissolved in wine,
Forgotten stragglers half-divine
Creep to their ancient sanctuaries
Where salt-sweet thyme and sorrel-spire
Feed on the dust of ancient fire.
And when the light is almost dead,
Low-swung and loose the brown clouds flow
In an unhasting happy row
Out seaward over Beachy Head,
Where, far below, the faithful sea
Mutters its wordless liturgy;
Then Sussex gods of sky and sun,
Gods never worshipped in a grove,
Walk on the hills they used to love,
Where the Long Man of Wilmington,
Warden of their old frontier, stands
And welcomes them with sceptred hands.
D.M.S.