They said "The end is forbidden."

said "Thy use is fulfilled,

They

And thy palace shall stand as that other'sthe spoil of a King who shall build."

I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves, and my shears.

All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years.

Only I cut on the timber, only I carved on the

stone:

After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have

known!

SUSSEX

GOD 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";