Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/263

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 and shadeless 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.