Page:Reuben and other poems.pdf/9



a bleak unshelter’d promontory— Seventy fathom of white chalk plunged down Sheer to deep sea, an edge to open space: Where, at her extreme bourne and outlook, Earth Stands up, and with a bared and dauntless brow Superbly fronts far ocean, shoreless air:— There lies a little hollow.

North, and east, And westward (save where one blue-opening vale Leads inland to the village and is lined With hanging firwoods dark), treeless and wan, Untenanted, unplough’d, as mid-sea blank, Spreads far away the everlasting down: A lonely tableland, whose pastures huge, Gradually undulating, never crown’d By soaring peak, nor falling to deep dales, With sober, tawny, equable long lines, Uninterrupted sweep the enormous sky: A voiceless lifted world of roomy peace, Whose simple amplitude and pure expanse