104 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



gleaming azure about a narrow spit of grass, in sight of 

 a sharp white fall of chalk, into the lucid quiet sea. At 

 this bend a company of sycamores girds and is one with 

 a group of tiled and thatched and gabled buildings, of 

 ochre, brown and rose. The road crosses the river and 

 a path leads near the sea, between mustard flower, lucerne, 

 beans, corn and grass, in flint-walled fields, to a church 

 and farm of flint, overtopped by embowering chestnuts, 

 ilex and the elms of rooks; and below there is another 

 valley and river, a green pathless marsh, at whose edge five 

 noisy belching chimneys stand out of a white pit. The 

 path, over turf, rises to the Downs, passing a lonely flint 

 barn with rich dark roof and a few sycamores for mates. 

 This is the cornland, and the corn bunting sings solitary 

 and monotonous, and the linnets twitter still in flocks. 

 Above and around, the furzy coombes are the home of 

 blackbirds that have a wilder song in this world of infinite 

 corn below and grass above, and but one house. Violets 

 and purple orchis (and its white buds) cloud the turf. 

 On the other side the Downs sink to gently clustered 

 and mounded woods and yet more corn surrounding a 

 thatched flint barn, a granary and cart-lodge, and, again, 

 a farm under sycamores. 



The soft-ribbed grey sky of after-sunset is slowly 

 moving, kindly and promising rain. The air is still, the 

 road dusty, but the hedges tender green, and the grass- 

 hopper lark sings under the wild parsley of the roadside 

 and the sedge-warbler in the sallows. 



Just beyond is the town by the beautiful domed hill, 

 a town of steep lanes and wallflowers on old walls and 

 such a date as 1577 modestly inscribed on a doorway; its 

 long old street, sternly adapted to the needs of shopkeepers 



