[Sidenote: "TO A SEAMEW"] Choughs are rare at Beachy Head, but jackdaws and gulls are in great and noisy profusion; and this reminds me that it was on Beachy Head in September, 1886, that the inspiration of one of the most beautiful bird-poems in our language came to its author--the ode "To a Seamew" of Mr. Swinburne. I quote five of its haunting stanzas: We, sons and sires of seamen, Whose home is all the sea, What place man may, we claim it; But thine----whose thought may name it? Free birds live higher than freemen, And gladlier ye than we---- We, sons and sires of seamen, Whose home is all the sea. For you the storm sounds only More notes of more delight Than earth's in sunniest weather: When heaven and sea together Join strengths against the lonely Lost bark borne down by night, For you the storm sounds only More notes of more delight. * * * * * 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. [Sidenote: PARSON DARBY] The old lighthouse on Beachy Head, the Belle Tout, which first flung its beams abroad in 1831, has just been superseded by the new lighthouse built on the shore under the cliff.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. [Sidenote: UNDER BEACHY HEAD]