Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/31

Rh its buff and crimson-streaked eggs; whilst above grey-headed kites swam in circles; and round the coast the sea-eagle slowly flapped its heavy bulk. Great oaks, shorn flat by the Channel winds, fringed the high Hordle cliffs, towering above the sea; and opposite, as to this day, rose the white chalk rocks of the Needles, and the Isle of Wight, not bare as it now is but covered, too, with a dense forest. And the sun would set as it now does, but upon all this further beauty, making a broad path of glory across the bay, till at last it sank down over the Priory Church of Christchurch, which Flambard was then building.

Gone, too, for ever all the scenes which they must have had of the Avon, glimpses of it caught among the trees as they galloped through the broad lawns, or under the sides of Godshill, and Castle Hill crested with yews and oaks.

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