Old Shoreham church, by William
de Braose, the lord of Bramber Castle. It is New Shoreham Church which
Mr. Swinburne had in mind (or so I imagine) in his noble poem "On the
South Coast":--

Strong as time, and as faith sublime,--clothed round with shadows
of hopes and fears,
Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of
prayers and tears,--
Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and
waning years.

Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that
glooms and glows,
Wall and roof of it tempest-proof, and equal ever to suns and snows,
Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a
straight stem grows.

* * * * *

Stately stands it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar
and near,
Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the
seaboard here;
Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that
the dawn holds dear.

Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there confronting dawn, on the
low green lea,
Lone and sweet as for fairies' feet held sacred, silent and strange
and free,
Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn on the
fairer sea.

* * * * *

Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the
first ray peers;
Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with
the grace of years;

[Illustration: _Old Shoreham Bridge._]

[Sidenote: A SHOREHAM EPITAPH]

In the churchyard there was once (and may be still, but I did not find
it) an epitaph on a child of eight months, in the form of a dialogue
between the deceased and its parents. It contained these lines:--

"'I trust in Christ,' the blessed babe replied,
Then smil'd, then sigh'd, then clos'd its eyes and died."

[Illustration: _Old Shoreham Church._]

Shoreham's notoriety as a pocket borough--it returned two members to
Parliament, who were elected in the north transept of the church--came
to a head in 1701, when the naive means by which Mr. Gould had proved
his fitness were revealed. It seemed that Mr. Gould, who had never been
to Shoreham before, directed the crier to give notice with his bell that
every voter who came to the King's A