William Allingham

Here you will find the Poem Places and Men of poet William Allingham

Places and Men

In Sussex here, by shingle and by sand, 
Flat fields and farmsteads in their wind-blown trees, 
The shallow tide-wave courses to the land, 
And all along the down a fringe one sees 
Of ducal woods. That 'dim discovered spire' 
Is Chichester, where Collins felt a fire 
Touch his sad lips; thatched Felpham roofs are these, 
Where happy Blake found heaven more close at hand. 

Goodwood and Arundel possess their lords, 
Successive in the towers and groves, which stay; 
These two poor men, by some right of their own, 
Possessed the earth and sea, the sun and moon, 
The inner sweet of life; and put in words 
A personal force that doth not pass away.