SELECTIONS IN ENGLISH POETRY
Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair, 50
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. 6
I -will go out against the sun
Where the rolled scrap retires,
And the Long Man of Wilmington
Looks naked toward the shires;
And east till doubling Rother crawls ~0
To find the fickle tide,
By dry sea-forgotten walls,
Our ports of stranded pride.
I will go north about the shaws
And the deep ghylls that breed 75
Huge oaks and old, the which he hold
No more than Sussex weed;
Or south where windy Piddinghoe's
Begilded dolphin veers,
And black beside wide-banked Ouse 80
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— 85
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.