Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that
the dawn holds dear.

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.

Eastward, round by the high green bound of hills that fold the
remote fields in,
Strive and shine on the low sea-line fleet waves and beams when the
days begin;
Westward glow, when the days burn low, the sun that yields and the
stars that win.

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.

Death, more proud than the kings' heads bowed before him, stronger
than all things, bows
Here his head: as if death were dead, and kingship plucked from his
crownless brows,
Life hath here such a face of cheer as change appals not and time
avows.