nds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with
the grace of years;
Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that
death reveres.

Death, more proud than the kings' heads bowed before him, stronger
than all things, bows
Here his head: as if death were dead, and kingship plucked from his
crownless brows,
Life hath here such a face of cheer as change appals not and time
avows.

Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a
flower that spreads,
Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven's the luminous
oyster-beds,
Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that
the sundown sheds.

Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that
kindled it shines with shine
Warm and soft as the dome aloft, but heavenlier yet than the sun's
own shrine:
Heaven is high, but the water-sky lit here seems deeper and more
divine.

Flowers on flowers, that the whole world's bowers may show not,
here may the sunset show,
Lightly graven in the waters paven with ghostly gold by the clouds
aglow:
Bright as love is the vault above, but lovelier lightens the wave
below.

Rosy grey, or as fiery spray full-plumed, or greener than emerald,
gleams
Plot by plot as the skies allot for each its glory, divine as
dreams
Lit with fire of appeased desire which sounds the secret of all
that seems;

Dreams that show what we fain would know, and know not save by the
grace of sleep,
Sleep whose hands have removed the bands that eyes long waking and
fain to weep
Feel fast bound on them--light around them strange, and darkness
above them steep.

Yet no vision that heals division of love from love, and renews
awhile
Life and breath in the lips where death has quenched the spirit of
speech and smile,
Shows on earth, or in heaven's mid mirth, where no fears enter or
doubts defile,

Aught more fair than the radiant air and water here by the twilight
wed,
Here made one by the waning sun whose last love quickens to
rosebright red
Half the crown of the soft high down that rear