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. |
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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! |
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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, |
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Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim, |
Blue goodness of the Weald. |
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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. |
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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. |
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We have no waters to delight |
Our broad and brookless vales - |
Only the dewpond on the height |
Unfed, that never fails - |
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Which way the season flies - |
Only our close-bit thyme that smells |
Like dawn in Paradise. |
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Here through the strong and shadeless 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. |
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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. |
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I will go out against the sun |
Where the rolled scarp retires, |
And the Long Man of Wilmington |
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And east till doubling Rother crawls |
To find the fickle tide, |
By dry and sea-forgotten walls, |
Our ports of stranded pride. |
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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 red beside wide-banked Ouse |
Lie down our Sussex steers. |
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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. |
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God gives all men all earth to love, |
But, since man's heart is small, |
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Beloved over all. |
Each to his choice, and I rejoice |
|
In a fair ground - in a fair ground - |
Yea, Sussex by the sea! |