| Share page |
|
XXXIV |
PARSON DARBY |
523 |
||
|
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 take my song's wild honey, And give me back thy sunny Wide eyes that weary never,
And wings that search the sea ; Ah, well were I for ever,
Wouldst thou change lives with me.
The old lighthouse on Beachy Head, the Belle Tout, which first flung its beams abroad in 1831, has just been superseded by the new lighthouse built on the shore under the cliff. Near the new lighthouse is Parson Darby's Hole—a cavern in the cliff said to have been hewed out by the Rev. Jonathan Darby of East Dean as a refuge from the tongue of Mrs. Darby. Another account credits the parson with the wish to provide a sanctuary for shipwrecked sailors, whom he guided thither on stormy nights by torches. In a recent Sussex story by Mr. Horace Hutchinson, called A Friend of Nelson, we find the cave in the hands of a powerful smuggler, mysterious and accomplished as Lavengro, some years after Darby's death.
A pleasant walk from Eastbourne is to Biding Gap, a great
y 2 |
||||