ON SUSSEX DOWNS

A boy stood on the windy Sussex downs,

Resting a moment in his lonely walk

To gaze at the fresh fields, and their neighbour towns

Sunk in the valleys watered by thin streams

And sheltered by the pallid hills of chalk.

It seemed a land for slow and leisured dreams,

For fantasy, vague and cool as the mist.

The church there in the field, with yew-trees round

Should send across the air a silver sound