Various - Poems of To-Day: an Anthology стр 7.

  Yonder in the heather there's a bed for sleeping,
    Drink for one athirst, ripe blackberries to eat;
  Yonder in the sun the merry hares go leaping,
    And the pool is clear for travel-wearied feet.

  Sorely throb my feet, a-tramping London highways,
    (Ah! the springy moss upon a northern moor!)
  Through the endless streets, the gloomy squares and byways,
    Homeless in the City, poor among the poor!

  London streets are goldah, give me leaves a-glinting
    'Midst grey dykes and hedges in the autumn sun!
  London water's wine, poured out for all unstinting
    God! For the little brooks that tumble as they run!

  Oh, my heart is fain to hear the soft wind blowing,
    Soughing through the fir-tops up on northern fells!
  Oh, my eye's an ache to see the brown burns flowing
    Through the peaty soil and tinkling heather-bells.

  Too soothe and mild your lowland airs
    For one whose hope is gone:
  I'm thinking of a little tarn,
    Brown, very lone.

  Would now the tall swift mists could lay
    Their wet grasp on my hair,
  And the great natures of the hills
    Round me friendly were.

  In vain!For taking hills your plains
    Have spoilt my soul, I think,
  But would my feet were going down
    Towards the brown tarn's brink.

  Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
    Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
  Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
    My heart remembers how!

  Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
    Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
  Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races,
    And winds, austere and pure:

  Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
    Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
  Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
    And hear no more at all.

  Through the sunny garden
    The humming bees are still;
  The fir climbs the heather,
    The heather climbs the hill.

  The low clouds have riven
    A little rift through.
  The hill climbs to heaven,
    Far away and blue.

  O the high valley, the little low hill,
    And the cornfield over the sea,
  The wind that rages and then lies still,
    And the clouds that rest and flee!

  O the gray island in the rainbow haze,
    And the long thin spits of land,
  The roughening pastures and the stony ways,
    And the golden flash of the sand!

  O the red heather on the moss-wrought rock,
    And the fir-tree stiff and straight,
  The shaggy old sheep-dog barking at the flock,
    And the rotten old five-barred gate!

  O the brown bracken, the blackberry bough,
    The scent of the gorse in the air!
  I shall love them ever as I love them now,
    I shall weary in Heaven to be there!

  Strike, Life, a happy hour, and let me live
    But in that grace!
  I shall have gathered all the world can give,
    Unending Time and Space!

  Bring light and airthe thin and shining air
    Of the North land,
  The light that falls on tower and garden there,
    Close to the gold sea-sand.

  Bring flowers, the latest colours of the earth,
    Ere nun-like frost
  Lay her hard hand upon this rainbow mirth,
    With twinkling emerald crossed.

  The white star of the traveller's joy, the deep
    Empurpled rays that hide the smoky stone,
  The dahlia rooted in Egyptian sleep,
    The last frail rose alone.

  Let music whisper from a casement set
    By them of old,
  Where the light smell of lavender may yet
    Rise from the soft loose mould.

  Then shall I know, with eyes and ears awake,
    Not in bright gleams,
  The joy my Heavenly Father joys to make
    For men who grieve, in dreams!

  God gave all men all earth to love,
    But since our hearts are small,
  Ordained for each one spot should prove
    Beloved 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 groundin 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
  Only our close-bit thyme that smells
    Like dawn in Paradise.

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

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

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

  I will go north about the shaws
    And the deep ghylls that breed
  Huge oaks and old, the which we hold
    No more than "Sussex weed";
  Or south where windy Piddinghoe's
    Begilded dolphin veers,
  And black beside wide-banked Ouse
    Lie down our Sussex steers.

  So to the land our hearts we give
    Till the sure magic strike,
  And Memory, Use, and Love make live
    Us and our fields alike
  That deeper than our speech and thought,
    Beyond our reason's sway,
  Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
    Yearns 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 prove
    Beloved over all.
  Each to his choice, and I rejoice
    The lot has fallen to me
  In a fair groundin a fair ground
    Yea, Sussex by the sea!