12 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



memories I have mentioned, but because the poem 

 had the South Downs for its subject ; also because 

 Bishopstone, the " favorite village," the author's birth- 

 place and where in after life he was vicar, was well 

 known to me, although I had not yet been in its 

 church. After reading the work two " or three times, 

 I am compelled to say that it is very bad poetry, 

 reminding one in its prosy diction and occasional 

 rhetorical outbursts, now of The Task and now of 

 The Seasons. In all the mass of descriptive matter 

 about the downs I am unable to find a passage 

 worth quoting. In spite of my disappointment, when 

 Sunday came I went to Bishopstone with a new and 

 lively interest, and saw that small pretty village 

 among the downs near Newhaven in its brightest and 

 best aspect. It was early August ; the corn was all 

 cut and most of it carried, and the round treeless hills 

 were yellow in that brilliant morning sunshine — straw 

 yellow against the pure etherial blue of heaven. 

 And in a hollow among the great hills nestled Bishop- 

 stone, out of sight but not out of hearing of the sea, 

 when its " accents disconsolate " sound afar in the 

 silence of the night — the tiniest and the most charac- 

 teristic of the downland villages. The few houses, 

 cottages, and farm buildings, each one unlike all the 

 others, its own character stamped upon it, but all alike 

 rich in the ornament of yellow, orange, grey and rust- 

 red lichen stains, were picturesquely grouped about the 

 small ancient flint church ; and there was shade of beech 



