Sussex poems and songs

[Buzzer]

Aside from GOSBTS, has anyone got any favourites? I love 'The South Country' by Hilaire Belloc. There's some lovely quotes in it..

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.
...
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.
...

 

[Norman Potting]

You probably don't need to be told this but Bob Copper's books have some in them I believe, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Sussex

 

[Buzzer]

You probably don't need to be told this but Bob Copper's books have some in them I believe, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Sussex

Ah yes! Thanks for the reminder, I'd completely forgotten about the Coppers. I'll check that out right now.

 

[Buzzer]

In pop and rock, Brighton gets hundreds of mentions, of course. Suede reference my hometown of Worthing, Leo Sayer name-drops Montague Street, there's a Phil Manzanera (no, I've never heard of him either) song which Robert Wyatt played on called Cissbury Ring (my favourite place in the whole world). Trouble is I think the song is a bit pants.

 

[Gwylan]

What about the John Purvis's lovely war poem?


I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the Ring
In summer time, and on the Down how larks and linnets sing
High in the sun. The wind comes off the sea, and Oh the air!
I never knew till now that life in old days was so fair.
But now I know it in this filthy rat infested ditch
When every shell may spare or kill - and God alone knows which.
And I am made a beast of prey, and this trench is my lair.
My God! I never knew till now that those days were so fair.
So we assault in half an hour, and, - it's a silly thing -
I can't forget the narrow lane to Chanctonbury Ring.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

In pop and rock, Brighton gets hundreds of mentions, of course. Suede reference my hometown of Worthing, Leo Sayer name-drops Montague Street, there's a Phil Manzanera (no, I've never heard of him either) song which Robert Wyatt played on called Cissbury Ring (my favourite place in the whole world). Trouble is I think the song is a bit pants.

Phil Manzanera was in Roxy Music, certainly during their early, glorious, 70s period.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Metallica name-checking Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton

http://youtu.be/8DJ_tFPIIvM

 

[Buzzer]

Phil Manzanera was in Roxy Music, certainly during their early, glorious, 70s period.

In which case I hang my head in shame. Sorry about that.

 

[Brovion]

There's a Kipling poem, can't remember the title, but I LOVE the last verse:

God gives all men all earth to love,
But, since man’s heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground-in a fair ground,
Yea, Sussex by the sea!

EDIT: Just googled it and I think it's called, er, 'Sussex'

 

[Brovion]

Here's the full version, I didn't know it was so long:


God gave all men all earth to love,
But, since our hearts are small
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all;
That, as He watched Creation’s birth,
So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
And see that it is good.


So one shall Baltic pines content,
As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove’s droned lament
Before Levuka’s Trade.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground-in a fair ground —
Yea, Sussex by the sea!


No tender-hearted garden crowns,
No bosonied woods adorn
Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,
But gnarled and writhen thorn —
Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,
And, through the gaps revealed,
Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim,
Blue goodness of the Weald.


Clean of officious fence or hedge,
Half-wild and wholly tame,
The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge
As when the Romans came.
What sign of those that fought and died
At shift of sword and sword?
The barrow and the camp abide,
The sunlight and the sward.


Here leaps ashore the full Sou’west
All heavy-winged with brine,
Here lies above the folded crest
The Channel’s leaden line,
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
Along the hidden beach.


We have no waters to delight
Our broad and brookless vales —
Only the dewpond on the height
Unfed, that never fails —
Whereby no tattered herbage tells
Which way the season flies —
Only our close-bit thyme that smells
Like dawn in Paradise.


Here through the strong and shadeless days
The tinkling silence thrills;
Or little, lost, Down churches praise
The Lord who made the hills:
But here the Old Gods guard their round,
And, in her secret heart,
The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found
Dreams, as she dwells, apart.


Though all the rest were all my share,
With equal soul I’d see
Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair,
Yet none more fair than she.
Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,
And I will choose instead
Such lands as lie ‘twixt Rake and Rye,
Black Down and Beachy Head.


I will go out against the sun
Where the rolled scarp retires,
And the Long Man of Wilmington
Looks naked toward the shires;
And east till doubling Rother crawls
To find the fickle tide,
By dry and sea-forgotten walls,
Our ports of stranded pride.


I will go north about the shaws
And the deep ghylls that breed
Huge oaks and old, the which we hold
No more than Sussex weed;
Or south where windy Piddinghoe’s
Begilded dolphin veers,
And red beside wide-banked Ouse
Lie down our Sussex steers.


So to the land our hearts we give
Til the sure magic strike,
And Memory, Use, and Love make live
Us and our fields alike —
That deeper than our speech and thought,
Beyond our reason’s sway,
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
Yearns to its fellow-clay.


God gives all men all earth to love,
But, since man’s heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground-in a fair ground —
Yea, Sussex by the sea!

 

[knocky1]

Can we include paintings? Ravilious?

 

[Brovion]

Metallica name-checking Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton

http://youtu.be/8DJ_tFPIIvM

Originally done by the great Anti Nowhere League.

 

[Buzzer]

Did Shelley ever write about Sussex/Horsham/Castle Goring or was it all too sedentary for him? And did Blake ever write about Felpham and the Bognor Coast? I can't find anything by either man.

 

[AmexRuislip]

A Sussex Poem




The years have all vanished like old Slindon Wood.


They lie shattered and broken, torn by the wind


While I, revisiting old familiar haunts,


Breathing rich downland air as I did of old,


Remember - Time makes tourists of us all.




Down off the hill with a church clock striking six,


A distant dog barking as if to test the stillness


And the scent of woodsmoke, sweet apple and pear.


I was only passing through I know but in Sussex,


For a perfect moment, I belonged and was blessed.




Walking through woods in late October sunshine,


Beeches ablaze in restless glades of autumn gold,


Cherries already stripped of their dazzling brocade


And friends, kicking through the leaves, arm in arm,


Laughing - mocking the chill and the onset of the end.




Christmas Lunch and endless conversations


Spilling across the dunes and down to East Head.


Homeward like rooks across the pale December sky


To hot teas and presents and dogs by the fire.


Warmed through with love yet calling it company.




It's Christmas time once more. The years are long gone,


Gone with Belloc's plowman from Ha'nacker Hill.


Nothing is final - the windmill is turning again.


I am older, sadder. I can admit love now.


I knew it once in Sussex. They say I could return.




William Ayot

http://www.williamayot.com/Sussex.htm

 

[knocky1]

What about the John Purvis's lovely war poem?


I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the Ring
In summer time, and on the Down how larks and linnets sing
High in the sun. The wind comes off the sea, and Oh the air!
I never knew till now that life in old days was so fair.
But now I know it in this filthy rat infested ditch
When every shell may spare or kill - and God alone knows which.
And I am made a beast of prey, and this trench is my lair.
My God! I never knew till now that those days were so fair.
So we assault in half an hour, and, - it's a silly thing -
I can't forget the narrow lane to Chanctonbury Ring.

Hard to beat that one.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Originally done by the great Anti Nowhere League.

Indeed. I seem to remember Atilla had a banner during the football years which plagiarised these lyrics as well.

 

[Buzzer]

Can we include paintings? Ravilious?

Love it. The Constable seascapes are quite something too.

 

[jakarta]

The Music to Jerusalem was composed by Sir Hubert Parry when he lived in Rustington.

The Words to Jerusalem were written over a hundred years earlier by William Blake whilst living in Felpham.

West, West ,West Sussex......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8VH0sbEU20

 

[Buzzer]

It's not poetry although it reads like it...the first lines of Virginia Woolf's Evening Over Sussex is quite something:

Evening is kind to Sussex, for Sussex is no longer young, and she is grateful for the veil of evening as an elderly woman is glad when a shade is drawn over a lamp, and only the outline of her face remains. The outline of Sussex is still very fine. The cliffs stand out to sea, one behind another...

 

[knocky1]

Love it. The Constable seascapes are quite something too.

I think Constable got that hill top behind Lancing College that you see from Brighton seafront? I can't remember the name but it's near the training ground.