.
Think of the swallow in the air,
The salmon in the stream,
And cease to boast the records rare
Of paraffin and steam.

Most, most of all when comes the Spring,
Again to lay (as now)
Her hand benign and quickening
On meadow, hill and bough,
Should speed's enchantment lose its power,
For "None who would exceed
[The Mother speaks] a mile an hour,
My heart aright can read."

The turnpike from the car to fling,
As from a yacht the sea,
Is doubtless as inspiriting
As aught on land can be;
I grant the glory, the romance,
But look behind the veil--
Suppose that while the motor pants
You miss the nightingale!

[Sidenote: ALCISTON]

To return to Alfriston, there are two brief excursions (possible in the
vehicles that are glanced at in the foregoing verses) which ought to be
described here: to Alciston and to Wilmington. Alciston is a little
hamlet under the east slope of Firle Beacon, practically no more than a
farm house, a church, and dependant cottages. It is on a road that leads
only to itself and "to the Hill" (as the sign-boards say hereabout); it
is perhaps as nearly forgotten as any village in the county; and yet I
know of no village with more unobtrusive charm. The church, which has no
vicar of its own, being served from Selmeston, a mile away, stands high
amid its graves, the whole churchyard having been heaped up and
ramparted much as a castle is. In the hollow to the west of the church
is part of the farmyard: a pond, a vast barn with one of the noblest red
roofs in these parts, and the ruins of a stone pigeon house of great age
and solidity, buttressed and built as if for a siege, in curious
contrast to the gentle, pretty purpose for which it was intended.
Between the church and the hill, and almost adjoining it, is the
farmhouse, where the church keys are kept--a relic of Alciston Grange
(once the property of Battle Abbey)--with odds and ends of its past life
still visible, and a flourishing fig-tree at the back, heavy with fruit
when I saw it under a September sun. The front of the house looks due
east, across a valley of corn, to Berwick church, on a corresponding
mound, and beyond Berwick to the Downs above Wilmington. And at the foot
of the garden, on the top of the grey wall above the moat, is a long,
narrow terrace of turf, commanding this eastern view--a t