en
him the line about the crows and choughs:

Come on, sir; here's the place:--stand still.--How fearful
And dizzy 't is, to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire--dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,
That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high.--I'll look no more,
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.

[Sidenote: "TO A SEAMEW"]

Choughs are rare at Beachy Head, but jackdaws and gulls are in great and
noisy profusion; and this reminds me that it was on Beachy Head in
September, 1886, that the inspiration of one of the most beautiful
bird-poems in our language came to its author--the ode "To a Seamew" of
Mr. Swinburne. I quote five of its haunting stanzas:

We, sons and sires of seamen,
Whose home is all the sea,
What place man may, we claim it;
But thine----whose thought may name it?
Free birds live higher than freemen,
And gladlier ye than we----
We, sons and sires of seamen,
Whose home is all the sea.

For you the storm sounds only
More notes of more delight
Than earth's in sunniest weather:
When heaven and sea together
Join strengths against the lonely
Lost bark borne down by night,
For you the storm sounds only
More notes of more delight.

* * * * *

The lark knows no such rapture,
Such joy no nightingale,
As sways the songless measure,
Wherein thy wings take pleasure:
Thy love may no man capture,
Thy pride may no man quail;
The lark knows no such rapture,
Such joy no nightingale.

And we, whom dreams embolden,
We can but creep and sing
And watch through heaven's waste hollow
The flight no sight may follow
To the utter bourne beholden
Of none that lack thy wing:
And we, whom dreams embolden,
We can but creep and sing.

* * * * *

Ah, well were I for ever,
Wouldst thou change lives with me,
And