Highways and Byways in Sussex

by E. V. Lucas

Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a straight stem grows.

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Stately stands it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar and near,

Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here;

Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that the dawn holds dear.

Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there confronting dawn, on the low green lea,

Lone and sweet as for fairies' feet held sacred, silent and strange and free,

Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn on the fairer sea.

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Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the first ray peers;