Sussex won't be druv.
French proverbs
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Armada
A nursery governess stood and stared
At a hundred and fifty ships,
That lay in the Harbour at Lisbon where
They loaded each Galleass,
They bristled with brass and iron guns
With cannon and shot to spare,
And thousands of Spanish soldiers, heading
For England, do or dare!
A girl from a gentle Sussex home,
She thought of her father's fate,
A bluff, old-fashioned seafarer
Who had sailed with Francis Drake,
But this was surely the grandest fleet
That ever had put to sea,
Since Christ had walked on the water
On that lake, in Galilee.
She took up her parchment, dipped the quill
And wrote to a face unknown,
She knew that the King of Spain would seek
To usurp Elizabeth's throne,
Her countrymen must be forewarned
Must all be made to see!
She wrote: 'A massive Armada sails
To seize your good country! '
She thrust it into a bottle that
Had held fine Spanish wine,
Then sealed the top with a plug of wax
To keep the message dry.
She flung it over the nearest cliff,
It drifted out to sea,
A message, meant for Sir Francis Drake
And all his company.
The bottle had bobbed on the surface as
The governess knelt and prayed,
'Dear Lord, deliver me just one thing
That England might be saved!
I'm merely an English governess,
Not versed in tricks or guile,
But if I could save dear England, then
My life had been worthwhile.'
The bottle still bobbed in the Channel, then
Was swept due south and west,
Right out to the mid-Atlantic swell
It made its way, unblessed,
For thirty years it had bobbled about,
[...] Read more
poem by David Lewis Paget
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The South Country
When I am living in the Midlands
That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
Come back into my mind.
The great hills of the South Country
They stand along the sea;
And it's there walking in the high woods
That I could wish to be,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Walking along with me.
The men that live in North England
I saw them for a day:
Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,
Their skies are fast and grey;
From their castle-walls a man may see
The mountains far away.
The men that live in West England
They see the Severn strong,
A-rolling on rough water brown
Light aspen leaves along.
They have the secret of the Rocks,
And the oldest kind of song.
But the men that live in the South Country
Are the kindest and most wise,
They get their laughter from the loud surf,
And the faith in their happy eyes
Comes surely from our Sister the Spring
When over the sea she flies;
The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,
She blesses us with surprise.
I never get between the pines
But I smell the Sussex air;
Nor I never come on a belt of sand
But my home is there.
And along the sky the line of the Downs
So noble and so bare.
A lost thing could I never find,
Nor a broken thing mend:
And I fear I shall be all alone
When I get towards the end.
Who will there be to comfort me
Or who will be my friend?
[...] Read more
poem by Hilaire Belloc
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Sussex
GOD gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Belovèd 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—
[...] Read more
poem by Rudyard Kipling
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Worth Forest
Come, Prudence, you have done enough to--day--
The worst is over, and some hours of play
We both have earned, even more than rest, from toil;
Our minds need laughter, as a spent lamp oil,
And after their long fast a recompense.
How sweet the evening is with its fresh scents
Of briar and fern distilled by the warm wind!
How green a robe the rain has left behind!
How the birds laugh!--What say you to a walk
Over the hill, and our long promised talk
About the rights and wrongs of infancy?
Our patients are asleep, dear angels, she
Holding the boy in her ecstatic arms,
As mothers do, and free from past alarms,
The child grown calm. If we, an hour or two,
Venture to leave them, 'tis but our hope's due.
My tongue is all agog to try its speed
To a new listener, like a long--stalled steed
Loosed in a meadow, and the Forest lies
At hand, the theme of its best flatteries.
See, Prudence, here, your hat, where it was thrown
The night you found me in the house alone
With my worst fear and these two helpless things.
Please God, that worst has folded its black wings,
And we may let our thoughts on pleasure run
Some moments in the light of this good sun.
They sleep in Heaven's guard. Our watch to--night
Will be the braver for a transient sight--
The only one perhaps more fair than they--
Of Nature dressed for her June holiday.
This is the watershed between the Thames
And the South coast. On either hand the streams
Run to the great Thames valley and the sea,
The Downs, which should oppose them, servilely
Giving them passage. Who would think these Downs,
Which look like mountains when the sea--mist crowns
Their tops in autumn, were so poor a chain?
Yet they divide no pathways for the rain,
Nor store up waters, in this pluvious age,
More than the pasteboard barriers of a stage.
The crest lies here. From us the Medway flows
To drain the Weald of Kent, and hence the Ouse
Starts for the Channel at Newhaven. Both
These streams run eastward, bearing North and South.
But, to the West, the Adur and the Arun
Rising together, like twin rills of Sharon,
Go forth diversely, this through Shoreham gap,
And that by Arundel to Ocean's lap.
All are our rivers, by our Forest bred,
[...] Read more
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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From an Outpost
I've tramped South England up and down
Down Dorset way, down Devon way,
Through every little ancient town
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.
I mind the old stone churches there,
The taverns round the market square,
The cobbled streets, the garden flowers,
The sundials telling peaceful hours
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.
The Meadowlands are green and fair
Down Somerset and Sussex way,
The clover scent is in the air
Down Somerset and Sussex way.
I mind the deep-thatched homesteads there
The noble downlands, clean and bare.
The sheepfolds and the cattle byres,
The blue wood-smoke from shepherd's fires
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.
Mayhap I shall not walk again
Down Dorset way, down Devon way,
Nor pick a posy in a lane
Down Somerset and Sussex way.
But though my bones, unshriven, rot
In some far distant alien spot,
what soul I have shall rest from care
To know that meadows still are fair
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.
poem by Leslie Coulson
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Alnaschar and the Oxen
There's a pasture in a valley where the hanging woods divide,
And a Herd lies down and ruminates in peace;
Where the pheasant rules the nooning, and the owl the twilight tide,
And the war-cries of our world die out and cease.
Here I cast aside the burden that each weary week-day brings
And, delivered from the shadows I pursue,
On peaceful, postless, Sabbaths I consider Weighty Things
Such as Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew!
At the gate beside the river where the trouty shallows brawl,
I know the pride that Lobengula felt,
When he bade the bars be lowered of the Royal Cattle Kraal,
And fifteen miles of oxen took the veldt.
From the walls of Bulawayo in unbroken file they came
To where the Mount of Council cuts the blue . . .
I have only six and twenty, but the principle's the same
With my Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew!
To a luscious sound of tearing, where the clovered herbage rips,
Level-backed and level-bellied watch 'em move.
See those shoulders, guess that heart-girth, praise those loins, admire those hips,
And the tail set low for flesh to make above!
Count the broad unblemished muzzles, test the kindly mellow skin
And, where yon heifer lifts her head at call,
Mark the bosom's just abundance 'neath the gay and cleancut chin,
And those eyes of Juno, overlooking all!
Here is colour, form and substance, I will put it to the proof
And, next season, in my lodges shall be born
Some very Bull of Mithras, flawless from his agate hoof
To his even-branching ivory, dusk-tipped horn.
He shall mate with block-square virgins - kings shall seek his like in vain,
While I multiply his stock a thousandfold,
Till an hungry world extol me, builder of a lofty strain
That turns one standard ton at two years old.
There's a valley, under oakwood, where a man may dream his dream,
In the milky breath of cattle laid at ease,
Till the moon o'ertops the alders, and her image chills the stream,
And the river-mist runs silver round their knees!
Now the footpaths fade and vanish; now the ferny clumps deceive;
Now the hedgerow-folk possess their fields anew;
Now the Herd is lost in darkness, and I bless them as I leave,
My Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew!
poem by Rudyard Kipling
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History
The Roman threw us a road, a road,
And sighed and strolled away:
The Saxon gave us a raid, a raid,
A raid that came to stay;
The Dane went west, but the Dane confessed
That he went a bit too far;
And we all became, by another name,
The Imperial race we are.
The Imperial race, the inscrutable race,
The invincible race we are.
Though Sussex hills are bare, are bare,
And Sussex weald is wide,
From Chichester to Chester
Men saw the Norman ride;
He threw his sword in the air and sang
To a sort of a light guitar;
It was all the same, for we all became
The identical nobs we are.
The identical nobs, individual nobs,
Unmistakable nobs we are.
The people lived on the land, the land,
They pottered about and prayed;
They built a cathedral here and there
Or went on a small crusade:
Till the bones of Becket were bundled out
For the fun of a fat White Czar,
And we all became, in spoil and flame,
The intelligent lot we are.
The intelligent lot, the intuitive lot,
The infallible lot we are.
O Warwick woods are green, are green,
But Warwick trees can fall:
And Birmingham grew so big, so big,
And Stratford stayed so small.
Till the hooter howled to the morning lark
That sang to the morning star:
And we all became, in freedom's name,
The fortunate chaps we are.
The fortunate chaps, felicitous chaps,
The fairy-like chaps we are.
The people, they left the land, the land,
But they went on working hard:
[...] Read more
poem by G.K. Chesterton from Songs of Education
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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To Belloc
For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree;
You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
A Sussex moon, untravelled still,
I saw a moon that was the town's,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill.
Yea; Heaven is everywhere at home
The big blue cap that always fits,
And so it is (be calm; they come
To goal at last, my wandering wits),
So is it with the heroic thing;
This shall not end for the world's end
And though the sullen engines swing,
Be you not much afraid, my friend.
This did not end by Nelson's urn
Where an immortal England sits--
Nor where your tall young men in turn
Drank death like wine at Austerlitz.
And when the pedants bade us mark
What cold mechanic happenings
Must come; our souls said in the dark,
"Belike; but there are likelier things."
Likelier across these flats afar
These sulky levels smooth and free
The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty;
Likelier the barricades shall blare
Slaughter below and smoke above,
And death and hate and hell declare
That men have found a thing to love.
Far from your sunny uplands set
I saw the dream; the streets I trod
The lit straight streets shot out and met
The starry streets that point to God.
This legend of an epic hour
A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
Under the great grey water-tower
That strikes the stars on Campden Hill
poem by G.K. Chesterton
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Nonsense Verses
By Edward Leary.
There was an old fellow of Peterhouse,
Who said, "You could not find a neater house
Than our new Combination-Room
For a mild dissipation room."
That abandoned old Fellow of Peterhouse.
There was a boat captain of Downing,
Whose crew were in danger of drowning,
But he cried, "Swim to shore,
For I'm sure that eight more
Could not be collected in Downing."
There was a young genius of Queens',
Who was fond of explosive machines,
He once blew up a door,
But he'll do it no more,
For it chanced that that door was the Dean's.
There was a young student of Caius,
Who collected black beetles and fleas,
He'd walk out in the wet
With his butterfly net,
And smile, and seem quite at his ease.
There was a young man of Sid. Sussex,
Who insisted that w + x
Was the same as xw;
So they said, "Sir, we'll trouble you
To confine that idea to Sid. Sussex."
There was a young gourmand of John's,
Who'd a notion of dining on swans,
To the Backs he took big nets
To capture the cygnets,
But was told they were kept for the Dons.
There was an old Fellow of Trinity,
A Doctor well versed in Divinity,
But he took to free thinking
And then to deep drinking,
And so had to leave the vicinity.
poem by Arthur Clement Hilton
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Songs of Education
I. HISTORY
Form 991785, Sub-Section D
The Roman threw us a road, a road,
And sighed and strolled away:
The Saxon gave us a raid, a raid,
A raid that came to stay;
The Dane went west, but the Dane confessed
That he went a bit too far;
And we all became, by another name,
The Imperial race we are.
The Imperial race, the inscrutable race,
The invincible race we are.
Though Sussex hills are bare, are bare,
And Sussex weald is wide,
From Chichester to Chester
Men saw the Norman ride;
He threw his sword in the air and sang
To a sort of a light guitar;
It was all the same, for we all became
The identical nobs we are.
The identical nobs, individual nobs,
Unmistakable nobs we are.
The people lived on the land, the land,
They pottered about and prayed;
They built a cathedral here and there
Or went on a small crusade:
Till the bones of Becket were bundled out
For the fun of a fat White Czar,
And we all became, in spoil and flame,
The intelligent lot we are.
The intelligent lot, the intuitive lot,
The infallible lot we are.
O Warwick woods are green, are green,
But Warwick trees can fall:
And Birmingham grew so big, so big,
And Stratford stayed so small.
Till the hooter howled to the morning lark
That sang to the morning star:
And we all became, in freedom's name,
The fortunate chaps we are.
The fortunate chaps, felicitous chaps,
[...] Read more
poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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To Belloc
For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree;
You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
A Sussex moon, untravelled still,
I saw a moon that was the town's,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill.
Yea; Heaven is everywhere at home
The big blue cap that always fits,
And so it is (be calm; they come
To goal at last, my wandering wits),
So is it with the heroic thing;
This shall not end for the world's end
And though the sullen engines swing,
Be you not much afraid, my friend.
This did not end by Nelson's urn
Where an immortal England sits--
Nor where your tall young men in turn
Drank death like wine at Austerlitz.
And when the pedants bade us mark
What cold mechanic happenings
Must come; our souls said in the dark,
'Belike; but there are likelier things.'
Likelier across these flats afar
These sulky levels smooth and free
The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty;
Likelier the barricades shall blare
Slaughter below and smoke above,
And death and hate and hell declare
That men have found a thing to love.
Far from your sunny uplands set
I saw the dream; the streets I trod
The lit straight streets shot out and met
The starry streets that point to God.
This legend of an epic hour
A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
Under the great grey water-tower
That strikes the stars on Campden Hill
poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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Charades
I.
She stood at Greenwich, motionless amid
The ever-shifting crowd of passengers.
I marked a big tear quivering on the lid
Of her deep-lustrous eye, and knew that hers
Were days of bitterness. But, 'Oh! what stirs'
I said 'such storm within so fair a breast?'
Even as I spoke, two apoplectic curs
Came feebly up: with one wild cry she prest
Each singly to her heart, and faltered, 'Heaven be blest!'
Yet once again I saw her, from the deck
Of a black ship that steamed towards Blackwall.
She walked upon MY FIRST. Her stately neck
Bent o'er an object shrouded in her shawl:
I could not see the tears--the glad tears--fall,
Yet knew they fell. And 'Ah,' I said, 'not puppies,
Seen unexpectedly, could lift the pall
From hearts who KNOW what tasting misery's cup is,
As Niobe's, or mine, or Mr. William Guppy's.'
* * *
Spake John Grogblossom the coachman to Eliza Spinks the cook:
'Mrs. Spinks,' says he, 'I've foundered: 'Liza dear, I'm overtook.
Druv into a corner reglar, puzzled as a babe unborn;
Speak the word, my blessed 'Liza; speak, and John the coachman's yourn.'
Then Eliza Spinks made answer, blushing, to the coachman John:
'John, I'm born and bred a spinster: I've begun and I'll go on.
Endless cares and endless worrits, well I knows it, has a wife:
Cooking for a genteel family, John, it's a goluptious life!
'I gets 20 pounds per annum--tea and things o' course not reckoned, -
There's a cat that eats the butter, takes the coals, and breaks MY
SECOND:
There's soci'ty--James the footman;--(not that I look after him;
But he's aff'ble in his manners, with amazing length of limb -
'Never durst the missis enter here until I've said 'Come in':
If I saw the master peeping, I'd catch up the rolling-pin.
Christmas-boxes, that's a something; perkisites, that's something too;
And I think, take all together, John, I won't be on with you.'
John the coachman took his hat up, for he thought he'd had enough;
Rubbed an elongated forehead with a meditative cuff;
Paused before the stable doorway; said, when there, in accents mild,
'She's a fine young 'oman, cook is; but that's where it is, she's
spiled.'
[...] Read more
poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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The Demon Milk
'Yer honor, please!' the prisoner said,
'It isn't wot you think.
To look on wine when it is red
Or alco'olic drink
Is not among me little ways.
I been teetotal all me days.
It ain't the wine, it ain't the beer,
It ain't the gin-an'-two
That bows me 'ead in sorrer 'ere.
'Tain't no fermented brew
That druv me on to sin an' strife.
Hark: 'Ere's the story of me life.
When I was just a little kid
I was a model child.
Wot I was tole to do I did,
Reel innercint an' mild.
But, bein' wise, an' unlike some,
At one year old I 'owled for rum.
Me nurse, wot was a strict t.t.
Aimed my young soul to bilk,
An' every day she flooded me
Wiv quarts an' quarts of milk.
Oh, 'ow the stuff coursed thro' each vein
An' set on fire me tiny brain.
At five, as well may be believed,
I was a little tough;
For by that then I 'ad conceived
A cravin' for the stuff.
I swiped it from each neighbor's door,
An' roamed the district seekin' more.
The cravin', sir, it got me down,
When I grew to a man;
I raided dairies thro' the town,
Pinched bottle, billy-can,
An' never could resist no'ow
The fascination of a cow.
It ain't the rum, it ain't the beer
Oh, 'ow I wish it was!
That brings me ignominy 'ere.
'Ave pity, sir, becos
It was the demon milk, I vows,
That made me pinch that 'erd of cows.'
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Jam (A Hymn of Hate)
What is meant by active service
'Ere where sin is leakin' loose,
'N' the oldest 'and's as nervis
As a dog-bedevilled goose,
Has bin writ be every poet
What can rhyme it worth a dam,
But the 'orror as we know it
Is jist jam, jam, JAM!
Oh, the 'ymn of 'ate we owe it—
Stodgy, splodgy, seepy, soaky, sanguinary
jam!
There's the “fearful roar iv battle,”
What gets underneath yer 'at,
Mooin' like a million cattle
Each as big as Ararat;
There's the red field green 'n' slippy
(And I'm cleaner where I am),
But the thing that's got me nippy
It is jam, jam, JAM!
Druv us sour it has, 'n' dippy,
Sticky, sicky, slimy, sloppy, stummick-strafin'
jam!
Of the mud that's in the trenches
Writers make a solemn fuss;
For the vermin 'n' the stenches
Little ladies pity us;
But the yearn that's honest dinkum,
'N' the prayer what ain't a sham
Is that Fritz may bust 'n' sink 'em
Ships of jam, jam, JAM!
For we bolt 'em, chew 'em, drink 'em,
Million billion bar'ls of beastly, cloyin'
clammy jam!
We are sorry-sick of peaches,
'N' we're full right up of plum,
'N' innards fairly screeches
When the tins of apple come.
Back of Blighty piled in cases,
Jist as close as they can cram,
Fillin' all the open spaces,
Is the 'jam, jam, JAM!
Oh, the woe the soldiers face is,
Monday, Sunday, ruddy, muddy, boundless
bogs of jam.
poem by Edward George Dyson
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How Deacon Fry Bought A Duchess
It sorter skeer'd the neighbours round,
For of all the 'tarnal set thet clutches
Their dollars firm, he wus the boss;
An' yet he went and byed a 'Duchess.'
I never will forget the day
He druv her from the city market;
I guess thar warn't more'n two
Thet stayed to hum thet day in Clarket.
And one of them wus Gran'pa Finch,
Who's bed-rid up to Spense's attic:
The other Aunt Mehitabel,
Whose jints and temper is rheumatic.
She said she 'guessed that Deacon Fry
Would some day see he'd done more fitter
To send his dollars savin' souls
Than waste 'em on a horn'd critter!'
We all turn'd out at Pewse's store,
The last one jest inside the village;
The Jedge he even chanc'd along,
And so did good old Elder Millage.
We sot around on kegs and planks,
And on the fence we loung'd precarious;
The Elder felt to speak a word,
And sed his thoughts wus very various.
He sed the Deacon call'd to mind
The blessed patriarchs and their cattle;
'To whose herds cum a great increase
When they in furrin parts did settle.'
We nodded all our skulls at this,
But Argue Bill he rapped his crutches;
Sed he, 'I guess they never paid
Five hundred dollars for a 'Duchess.''
Bill and the Elder allers froze
To subjects sorter disputatious,
So on the 'lasses keg they sot,
And had an argue fair and spacious.
Good land! when Solon cum in sight,
By lawyer Smithett's row o' beeches;
His black span seemed to crawl along
Ez slow ez Dr. Jones's leeches.
Sez Sister Fry, who was along,
'I sorter think my specs is muggy;
'But Solon started out from hum
'This mornin' in the new top buggy.
'Jeddiah rid old chestnut Jim,
[...] Read more
poem by Isabella Valancy Crawford
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Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.
quote by Nicolas Roeg
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I decided that the University of Sussex in Brighton was a good place for this work because it had a strong tradition in bacterial molecular genetics and an excellent reputation in biology.
quote by Paul Nurse
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He is not in the least arrogant. The last album was written in a room in Sussex. He was like a mad professor, spending all day writing and then coming out with brilliant tunes.
quote by Linda McCartney
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The Hammers
I
Frindsbury, Kent, 1786
Bang!
Bang!
Tap!
Tap-a-tap! Rap!
All through the lead and silver Winter days,
All through the copper of Autumn hazes.
Tap to the red rising sun,
Tap to the purple setting sun.
Four years pass before the job is done.
Two thousand oak trees grown and felled,
Two thousand oaks from the hedgerows of the Weald,
Sussex had yielded two thousand oaks
With huge boles
Round which the tape rolls
Thirty mortal feet, say the village folks.
Two hundred loads of elm and Scottish fir;
Planking from Dantzig.
My! What timber goes into a ship!
Tap! Tap!
Two years they have seasoned her ribs on the ways,
Tapping, tapping.
You can hear, though there's nothing where you gaze.
Through the fog down the reaches of the river,
The tapping goes on like heart-beats in a fever.
The church-bells chime
Hours and hours,
Dropping days in showers.
Bang! Rap! Tap!
Go the hammers all the time.
They have planked up her timbers
And the nails are driven to the head;
They have decked her over,
And again, and again.
The shoring-up beams shudder at the strain.
Black and blue breeches,
Pigtails bound and shining:
Like ants crawling about,
The hull swarms with carpenters, running in and out.
Joiners, calkers,
And they are all terrible talkers.
Jem Wilson has been to sea and he tells some wonderful tales
Of whales, and spice islands,
And pirates off the Barbary coast.
He boasts magnificently, with his mouth full of nails.
Stephen Pibold has a tenor voice,
He shifts his quid of tobacco and sings:
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poem by Amy Lowell
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The Emigrants: Book I
Scene, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of
Brighthelmstone in Sussex. Time, a Morning in November, 1792.
Slow in the Wintry Morn, the struggling light
Throws a faint gleam upon the troubled waves;
Their foaming tops, as they approach the shore
And the broad surf that never ceasing breaks
On the innumerous pebbles, catch the beams
Of the pale Sun, that with reluctance gives
To this cold northern Isle, its shorten'd day.
Alas! how few the morning wakes to joy!
How many murmur at oblivious night
For leaving them so soon; for bearing thus
Their fancied bliss (the only bliss they taste!),
On her black wings away!--Changing the dreams
That sooth'd their sorrows, for calamities
(And every day brings its own sad proportion)
For doubts, diseases, abject dread of Death,
And faithless friends, and fame and fortune lost;
Fancied or real wants; and wounded pride,
That views the day star, but to curse his beams.
Yet He, whose Spirit into being call'd
This wond'rous World of Waters; He who bids
The wild wind lift them till they dash the clouds,
And speaks to them in thunder; or whose breath,
Low murmuring, o'er the gently heaving tides,
When the fair Moon, in summer night serene,
Irradiates with long trembling lines of light
Their undulating surface; that great Power,
Who, governing the Planets, also knows
If but a Sea-Mew falls, whose nest is hid
In these incumbent cliffs; He surely means
To us, his reasoning Creatures, whom He bids
Acknowledge and revere his awful hand,
Nothing but good: Yet Man, misguided Man,
Mars the fair work that he was bid enjoy,
And makes himself the evil he deplores.
How often, when my weary soul recoils
From proud oppression, and from legal crimes
(For such are in this Land, where the vain boast
Of equal Law is mockery, while the cost
Of seeking for redress is sure to plunge
Th' already injur'd to more certain ruin
And the wretch starves, before his Counsel pleads)
How often do I half abjure Society,
And sigh for some lone Cottage, deep embower'd
In the green woods, that these steep chalky Hills
Guard from the strong South West; where round their base
The Beach wide flourishes, and the light Ash
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poem by Charlotte Smith
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