REUBEN
Behind a bleak unshelter’d promontory—
Seventy fathom of white chalk plunged down
Sheer to deep sea, an edge to open space:
Where, at her extreme bourne and outlook, Earth
Stands up, and with a bared and dauntless brow
Superbly fronts far ocean, shoreless air:—
There lies a little hollow.
North, and east,
And westward (save where one blue-opening vale
Leads inland to the village and is lined
With hanging firwoods dark), treeless and wan,
Untenanted, unplough’d, as mid-sea blank,
Spreads far away the everlasting down:
A lonely tableland, whose pastures huge,
Gradually undulating, never crown’d
By soaring peak, nor falling to deep dales,
With sober, tawny, equable long lines,
Uninterrupted sweep the enormous sky:
A voiceless lifted world of roomy peace,
Whose simple amplitude and pure expanse
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