A SUSSEX POSLY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3380, 25 December 1918, Page 52

A SUSSEX POSLY.

By Jessie Mackay

Of all the counties into which modern England is divided none stirs the historic imagination more than Sussex, that broad, fair, soft sea-border which has attracted rover and raider, friend and foe, pirate and poet, for 1500 years. If Kent, with its high white cliffs, proved the first key to England when Julius Ctesar's unrepealed onslaught shattered the tribal security of the South British, if Kent proved the first prize of the unshorn Northmen who followed Hengist and Horsa five centuries later, it was Sussex that saw the supreme disaster that gave the "heathen of the Northern Sea" command of the Channel Coast where the Southern Celts had deemed their lordship most secure. For it is where Pevensey now stands that the British fortress, Anderida, stood in its pride towards the end of the fifth century of our era. But its hour had come: the* old record tells briefly how "iElla and Cissa beset Anderida, and took it, and slew all that were therein." Six centuries later, again, and the fate, not of a tribal province but of all England, is settled at the same sea-gate, for Pevensey was the landing place of William the Conqueror, on his way to the field of Senlac, and it was on a Sussex 'battle-ground that Saxon England lost crown and hope where the hapless garrison of Anderida had met a cruel fate so long before.. These evil days are past, and the kindly traditions of Sussex Woods and the Sussex Weald have a rural charm far removed from the crimson pomp and circumstance of war. The English poets of to-day, it would seem, have more than ordinary affection for its beauty and its pleasantness, and it would appear that special inspiration is found in the good, thick Saxon that is still spoken in these parts. Here are a few of the verses which make up a county garland of particular graceand feeling. First comes "St. "Valentine's Day," a true-lover's sonnet that calls up a rural picture dead to English hearts: To-day, all day, I rode upon the down, With hounds and horsemen, a brave company. On this side in its glory lay the sea, On that the Sussex Weald, a sea of brown. The wind was light, and brightly the eun shone, And still we galloped! oh from gorse to gorse.

Your face my quarry was. For it I rode, My horse a thing of -wings, myself a god. The same author, Welfred Blunt, again "unlocks his heart with a sonnet-key" in "A Day in Sussex,' where the picture is more finely and delicately etched than in the first: The dove did lend me wings. I fled away From the loud world which long had troubled me. 0 lightly did I.flee when hoyden May Threw her wild mantle on the hawthorn, tree. 1 left the dusty highroad, and my way Was through dteep meadows, shut with oopses fair. ... Mild, moon-faced kine looked on where in the grass All heaped with flowers I lay—from noon till eve. ' . There are many who have never eeen Sussex, who have yet its charm hidden in their hearts for ever after reading Francis Thompson's rainbow idyll of childhood, "Daisy" : Oh, there were flowers in Storrington On the turf end on the ©pray; But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills Was the Daisy-flower that day I The- hills look over on the south And southward dreams the sea; ; "■''■. And with the sea-breeze hand, in hand Came innocence and she. The vignette of the sweet little Saxon maid is set in a simple touch or two that gives the colour and atmosphere, unchanged, . perhaps, since the wild and woful day of Senlac:Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill— O the breath of the distant surf! Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry Red for the gatherer springs, Two children did we stray and talk Wise, idle, childish things. She listened with big-lipped surprise Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine; Her skin was like a grape, whose veins Run snow instead of wine. She looked a little wistfully, Then went her sunshine way: The sea's eye had a mist on it, And the leaves fell from the day. It is love of Sussex itself, not a Sussex maid, that constrains Eudyai'd Kipling to frame one of his happiest achievements in verse these later days: God gave all men. all earth to love, But since our hearts are small, Ordained for each one spot should prove Beloved over all; Each to his choice, and I rejoice The lot has fallen to me In a fair ground—in a fair ground— Yea, Sussex by the sea! . No tender-hearted garden crowns, — Kb bosomed woods adorn Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs, But gnarled and writhen thorn Bare slopes -where chasing shadows skim, And through the gaps revealed Belt upon belt, the woodedi, dim Blue goodness of the Weald. We have ho 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. Strangely does this wooded plain with its old Saxon name take hold of men's hearts, as Wilfred Blunt in yet another invocation shows :

Dear checker-work of woods, the Sussex Weald. Each lag, each pasture,—fields which gave me birth, And saw my youth, and which must hold me dead.

But it is good to close on Hilaire Belloc's limpid song of "The South Country":—

The great hills of the South Country They stand along the sea, And it's there, walking in the high woods, That I could wish to be, And the men that were boys when I was a boy Walking along with me. ■

I never get between the pines But I smell the Sussex air; Nor I never come on a belt of sand But my home is there. And along the sky the line of the Downs So noble and so bare.

If I ever become a rich man, , Or if ever I grow to be old, I will build a house with deep thatch To shelter, me from the cold, And there shall the Sussex sonf?s be sung And the story of Sussex told.