Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn on the fairer sea.

[Pg 145]

Eastward, round by the high green bound of hills that fold the remote fields in,

Strive and shine on the low sea-line fleet waves and beams when the days begin;

Westward glow, when the days burn low, the sun that yields and the stars that win.

Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the first ray peers;

Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with the grace of years;

Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that death reveres.

Death, more proud than the kings' heads bowed before him, stronger than all things, bows

Here his head: as if death were dead, and kingship plucked from his crownless brows,

Life hath here such a face of cheer as change appals not and time avows.

Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a flower that spreads,

Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven's the luminous oyster-beds,

Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that the sundown sheds.

Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that kindled it shines with shine

Warm and soft as the dome aloft, but heavenlier yet than the sun's own shrine:

Heaven is high, but the water-sky lit here seems deeper and more divine.

[Pg 146]

Flowers on flowers, that the whole world's bowers may show not, here may the sunset show,

Lightly graven in the waters paven with ghostly gold by the clouds aglow:

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