No tender-hearted garden crowns,
            No 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 wooded, dim
            Blue goodness of the Weald.

          Clean of officious fence or hedge,
            Half-wild and wholly tame,
          The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge
            As when the Romans came.
          What sign of those that fought and died
            At shift of sword and sword?
          The barrow and the camp abide,
            The sunlight and the sward.

          Here leaps ashore the full Sou'west
            All heavy-winged with brine,
          Here lies above the folded crest
            The Channel's leaden line;
          And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
            And here, each warning each,
          The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
            Along the hidden beach.

          We have no 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.

          Here through the strong and salty days
            The unshaded silence thrills;
          Or little, lost, Down churches praise
            The Lord who made the Hills:
          But here the Old Gods guard their round,
            And, in her secret heart,
          The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found
            Dreams, as she dwells, apart.