ii 4 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



Wilt thou not come again, thou godly sword, 



Into the Spirit's hands ? 

 That he may be a captain of the Lord 



Again, and mow out of our lands 

 The crop of wicked men . . . 

 O for that anger in the hands 

 Of Spirit ! To us, O righteous sword, 



Come thou and clear our lands, 

 O fire, O indignation of the Lord ! l 



Bitter it is to think of that talk and laughter of shadows 

 on the long lawns under those oaks; for though their 

 shadows are even yet better than other men's bone or 

 blood, never yet did dead man lift up a hand to strike a 

 blow or lay a brick. In a churchyard behind I saw the 

 tombstone of one Robert Page, born in the year 1792 

 here in Sussex, and dead in 1822 not in the Bay of 

 Spezzia but in Sussex. He scared the crows, ploughed 

 the clay, fought at Waterloo and lost an arm there, was 

 well pleased with George the Fourth, and hoed the corn 

 until he was dead. That is plain sense, and I wish I 

 could write the life of this exact contemporary of Shelley. 

 That is quite probably his great granddaughter, black- 

 haired, of ruddy complexion, full lips, large white teeth, 

 black speechless eyes, dressed in a white print dress and 

 stooping in the fresh wind to take clean white linen 

 out of a basket, and then rising straight as a hazel wand, 

 on tiptoe, her Head held back and slightly oh one side 

 while she pegs the clothes to the line and praises the 

 weather to a passer-by. She is seventeen, and of such is 

 the kingdom of earth. 



Now at the coming on of night the wind has carried 

 away all the noises of the world. The lucid air under the 



1 From Poems and Interludes, by Lascelles Abercrombie. 



