Places And Men

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.