I searched for this next poem for several years, believing the title to
be 'Deja Vu' - from a version I found framed in a local curio shop. Only much later did I discover this was merely a 'commercial'
title and the true, author-bestowed name was somewhat different:
SUDDEN LIGHT by Dante Gabrielle Rossetti
I have been
here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing
sound,
the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some
veil did fall, - I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still
with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
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Hillaire Belloc lived in an old windmill in Sussex. This I did
not know when I decided to take a wander around Shipley churchyard and by chance stumbled across his grave.
Belloc died in the summer of 1953.
In 'Southern England' by Ralph Lawrence and Reginald Turnor, the narrative
tells of Belloc and a friend arriving unclean and unshaven in England following a walking holiday in France.
They then had to endure a long walk from Dover, having arrived there without a penny. They turned up in Rye 'derisively
accusing each other of having secretly washed in violation of an implied contract between tramps'.
The sentiments of this poem rather reflect my own. I searched
for a long time to rediscover the faintly remembered work but when I eventually committed my search to the 'web', it was the
first thing to appear on the screen in response to my search criteria:
THE SOUTH COUNTRY by Hilaire Belloc
When I am living
in the Midlands
That are sodden
and unkind,
I light my lamp
in the evening:
My work is left
behind;
And the great
hills of the South Country
Come back into
my mind.
The great hills
of the South Country
They stand along
the sea;
And it's there
walking in the high woods
That I could
wish to be,
And the men that
were boys when I was a boy
Walking along
with me.
The men that
live in North England
I saw them for
a day:
Their hearts
are set upon the waste fells,
Their skies are
fast and grey;
From their castle-walls
a man may see
The mountains
far away.
The men that
live in West England
They see the
Severn strong,
A-rolling on
rough water brown
Light aspen leaves
along.
They have the
secret of the Rocks,
And the oldest
kind of song.
But the men that
live in the South Country
Are the kindest
and most wise,
They get their
laughter from the loud surf,
And the faith
in their happy eyes
Comes surely
from our Sister the Spring
When over the
sea she flies;
The violets suddenly
bloom at her feet,
She blesses us
with surprise.
I never get between
the pines
But I smell the
Sussex air;
Nor I never come
on a belt of sand
But my home is
there.
And along the
sky the line of the Downs
So noble and
so bare.
A lost thing
could I never find,
Nor a broken
thing mend:
And I fear I
shall be all alone
When I get towards
the end.
Who will there
be to comfort me
Or who will be
my friend?
I will gather
and carefully make my friends
Of the men of
the Sussex Weald;
They watch the
stars from silent folds,
They stiffly
plough the field.
By them and the
God of the South Country
My poor soul
shall be healed.
If I ever become
a rich man,
Or if ever I
grow to be old,
I will build
a house with deep thatch
To shelter me
from the cold,
And there shall
the Sussex songs be sung
And the story
of Sussex told.
I will hold my
house in the high wood
Within a walk
of the sea,
And the men that
were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and
drink with me.
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