Astrophel and Other Poems/On the South Coast
ON THE SOUTH COAST.
To Theodore Watts.
Hills and valleys where April rallies his radiant
squadron of flowers and birds,
Steep strange beaches and lustrous reaches of fluctuant
sea that the land engirds,
Fields and downs that the sunrise crowns with life
diviner than lives in words,
Day by day of resurgent May salute the sun with
sublime acclaim,
Change and brighten with hours that lighten and darken,
girdled with cloud or flame;
Earth's fair face in alternate grace beams, blooms, and
lowers, and is yet the same.
Twice each day the divine sea's play makes glad with
glory that comes and goes
Field and street that her waves keep sweet, when past
the bounds of their old repose,
Fast and fierce in renewed reverse, the foam-flecked
estuary ebbs and flows.
Broad and bold through the stays of old staked fast with
trunks of the wildwood tree,
Up from shoreward, impelled far forward, by marsh and
meadow, by lawn and lea,
Inland still at her own wild will swells, rolls, and revels
the surging sea.
Strong as time, and as faith sublime,—clothed round with
shadows of hopes and fears,
Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with
passion of prayers and tears,—
Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred
waxing and waning years.
Tower set square to the storms of air and change of
season that glooms and glows,
Wall and roof of it tempest-proof, and equal ever to
suns and snows,
Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth
as a straight stem grows.
Aisle and nave that the whelming wave of time has
whelmed not or touched or neared,
Arch and vault without stain or fault, by hands of
craftsmen we know not reared,
Time beheld them, and time was quelled; and change
passed by them as one that feared.
Time that flies as a dream, and dies as dreams that die
with the sleep they feed,
Here alone in a garb of stone incarnate stands as a god
indeed,
Stern and fair, and of strength to bear all burdens mortal
to man's frail seed.
Men and years are as leaves or tears that storm or sorrow
is fain to shed:
These go by as the winds that sigh, and none takes note
of them quick or dead:
Time, whose breath is their birth and death, folds here
his pinions, and bows his head.
Still the sun that beheld begun the work wrought here of
unwearied hands
Sees, as then, though the Red King's men held ruthless
rule over lawless lands,
Stand their massive design, impassive, pure and proud as
a virgin stands.
Statelier still as the years fulfil their count, subserving
her sacred state,
Grows the hoary grey church whose story silence utters
and age makes great:
Statelier seems it than shines in dreams the face unveiled
of unvanquished fate.
Fate, more high than the star-shown sky, more deep than
waters unsounded, shines
Keen and far as the final star on souls that seek not for
charms or signs;
Yet more bright is the love-shown light of men's hands
lighted in songs or shrines.
Love and trust that the grave's deep dust can soil not,
neither may fear put out,
Witness yet that their record set stands fast, though
years be as hosts in rout,
Spent and slain; but the signs remain that beat back
darkness and cast forth doubt.
Men that wrought by the grace of thought and toil
things goodlier than praise dare trace,
Fair as all that the world may call most fair, save only
the sea's own face,
Shrines or songs that the world's change wrongs not,
live by grace of their own gift's grace.
Dead, their names that the night reclaims—alive, their
works that the day relumes—
Sink and stand, as in stone and sand engraven: none
may behold their tombs:
Nights and days shall record their praise while here this
flower of their grafting blooms.
Flower more fair than the sun-thrilled air bids laugh and
lighten and wax and rise,
Fruit more bright than the fervent light sustains with
strength from the kindled skies,
Flower and fruit that the deathless root of man's love
rears though the man's name dies.
Stately stands it, the work of hands unknown of:
statelier, afar and near,
Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze
from the seaboard here;
Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of
heights that the dawn holds dear.
Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there confronting dawn,
on the low green lea,
Lone and sweet as for fairies' feet held sacred, silent and
strange and free,
Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn
on the fairer sea.
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.
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:
Bright as love is the vault above, but lovelier lightens
the wave below.
Rosy grey, or as fiery spray full-plumed, or greener than
emerald, gleams
Plot by plot as the skies allot for each its glory, divine as
dreams
Lit with fire of appeased desire which sounds the secret
of all that seems;
Dreams that show what we fain would know, and know
not save by the grace of sleep,
Sleep whose hands have removed the bands that eyes
long waking and fain to weep
Feel fast bound on them—light around them strange,
and darkness above them steep.
Yet no vision that heals division of love from love, and
renews awhile
Life and breath in the lips where death has quenched
the spirit of speech and smile,
Shows on earth, or in heaven's mid mirth, where no fears
enter or doubts defile,
Aught more fair than the radiant air and water here by
the twilight wed,
Here made one by the waning sun whose last love
quickens to rosebright red
Half the crown of the soft high down that rears to
northward its wood-girt head.
There, when day is at height of sway, men's eyes who
stand, as we oft have stood,
High where towers with its world of flowers the golden
spinny that flanks the wood,
See before and around them shore and seaboard glad as
their gifts are good.
Higher and higher to the north aspire the green smooth-
swelling unending downs;
East and west on the brave earth's breast glow girdle-
jewels of gleaming towns;
Southward shining, the lands declining subside in peace
that the sea's light crowns.
Westward wide in its fruitful pride the plain lies lordly
with plenteous grace;
Fair as dawn's when the fields and lawns desire her
glitters the glad land's face:
Eastward yet is the sole sign set of elder days and a
lordlier race.
Down beneath us afar, where seethe in wilder weather
the tides aflow,
Hurled up hither and drawn down thither in quest of
rest that they may not know,
Still as dew on a flower the blue broad stream now
sleeps in the fields below.
Mild and bland in the fair green land it smiles, and
takes to its heart the sky;
Scarce the meads and the fens, the reeds and grasses,
still as they stand or lie,
Wear the palm of a statelier calm than rests on waters
that pass them by.
Yet shall these, when the winds and seas of equal days
and coequal nights
Rage, rejoice, and uplift a voice whose sound is even as
a sword that smites,
Felt and heard as a doomsman's word from seaward
reaches to landward heights,
Lift their heart up, and take their part of triumph,
swollen and strong with rage,
Rage elate with desire and great with pride that tempest
and storm assuage;
So their chime in the ear of time has rung from age to
rekindled age.
Fair and dear is the land's face here, and fair man's work
as a man's may be:
Dear and fair as the sunbright air is here the record
that speaks him free;
Free by birth of a sacred earth, and regent ever of all
the sea.