Poems of To-Day: an Anthology

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!

III

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 air—the 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!

    Mary E. Coleridge.

34. SUSSEX

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 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—