Places And Men

William Allingham

In Sussex here, by shingle and by sand, 
Flat fields and farmsteads in their wind-blown trees, 
The shallow tide-wave courses to the land, 
And all along the down a fringe one sees 
Of ducal woods. That 'dim discovered spire' 
Is Chichester, where Collins felt a fire 
Touch his sad lips; thatched Felpham roofs are these, 
Where happy Blake found heaven more close at hand. 

Goodwood and Arundel possess their lords, 
Successive in the towers and groves, which stay; 
These two poor men, by some right of their own, 
Possessed the earth and sea, the sun and moon, 
The inner sweet of life; and put in words 
A personal force that doth not pass away.

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