I have been told, and do not doubt,

That Devon lanes are dim with trees,

And shagged with fern, and loved of bees,

And all with roses pranked about;

I do believe that other-where

The woods are green, the meadows fair.

And woods, I know, have always been

The haunt of fairies, good or grim;

There the knight-errant hasted him;

There Bottom found King Oberon's Queen;

The Enchanted Castle always stood

Deep in the shadow of a wood.

But I know upland spirits too

Who love the shadeless downs to climb;

There, in the far-off fabled time,

Men called them when the moon was new,

And built them little huts of stone

With briar and thistle over-grown.

The trees are few and do not bend

To make a whispering swaying arch;

They are the elder and the larch,

Who have the north-east wind for friend,

And shield them from his bluff salute

With elbow kinked and moss-girt root.

There, when the clear Spring sunset dies

Like a great pearl dissolved in wine,

Forgotten stragglers half-divine

Creep to their ancient sanctuaries

Where salt-sweet thyme and sorrel-spire

Feed on the dust of ancient fire.

And when the light is almost dead,

Low-swung and loose the brown clouds flow

In an unhasting happy row

Out seaward over Beachy Head,

Where, far below, the faithful sea

Mutters its wordless liturgy;

Then Sussex gods of sky and sun,

Gods never worshipped in a grove,

Walk on the hills they used to love,

Where the Long Man of Wilmington,

Warden of their old frontier, stands

And welcomes them with sceptred hands.

D.M.S.