Let me find thee a word of gratitude for giving
To a soul that has looked for a refuge unto thee,
The rare, glad sense of the miracle of living,
The leap of the blood learning what it is to be.

Mother of men! For the children thou dost cherish, For the wholesome hearts that are beating over thine, For the clean, good ways thou wilt suffer not to perish, And the rustic warmth of the welcome that is mine,

For the nameless charm of thy soft bewitching beauty,
For the healing of the airs that o'er thy bosom roll,
I would gage my troth for a life of lover's duty,
I would crown thee a queen in the kingdom of my soul.

Sussex

A. E. J. Legge.

OD 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-
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 ground-in a fair ground

Yea, Sussex by the sea!

Rudyard Kipling.

A Song out of Oxfordshire

W

OULD we might see the crocus blow
Where Evenlode and Windrush flow,
The purple flame by autumn set
For jewel in her carcanet,

Where Evenlode and Windrush flow.

Would we might see the wistful morn
Win courage as she gilds the corn,
And watch the evening's valour die
Like an enchanted memory

As darkness comes and hides the corn.

Would we might see the valley kist
Once more by tender wreaths of mist,

U

Until it seems that there must lie
The secret land of faëry

Behind the rising wreaths of mist.

I would the time were come again
When we might watch the falling rain,
Close hidden in our forest house
That is so roofed with woven boughs
There is no entrance for the rain.

Would we might tread again the road
Where Windrush flows and Evenlode,
And see the skies we see in dreams
Lie mirrored in the singing streams,
In Windrush and in Evenlode.

Ethel Clifford.

The Great View

P here, where the air 's very clear,

And the hills slope away nigh down to the bay,

It is very like Heaven.

For the sea's wine-purple and lies half asleep In the sickle of the shore, and serene in the west, Lion-like, purple and brooding in the even, Low hills lure the sun to rest.

Very like Heaven. . . . For the vast marsh dozes,
And waving plough-lands and willowy closes

Creep and creep up the soft south steep.

In the pallid North the grey and ghostly downs do fold

away.

And spinning spider-threadlets down the sea, the sealights dance

And shake out their wavering radiance.