Highways and Byways in Sussex - online book

An illustrated appreciation, of the most interesting districts in Sussex.

Home | Order | Support | About | Contact | Search



Share page  



Previous Contents Next


188                                  A SHOREHAM EPITAPH                          ch. xix
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 ; Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that death
reveres.
In the churchyard there was once (and may be still, but I
Old Shoreham Bridge.
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."
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
Previous Contents Next