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192 KIPLING'S SUSSEX
powdered white with woodruff, and great beds of purple thyme. One afternoon, tired with a long day's ramble in the burning sun, I cast myself down on one of these fragrant beds and almost fell asleep. That night when I threw off my clothes I noticed that the fragrance still clung to them, and when I woke next morning the air of the room was so charged with it that for a moment I fancied myself still out of doors resting on that purple flowery bed."
Some lines written on the Ring by a soldier in Flanders reproduce in a very vivid manner how true is the saying that of all human affections the love of Earth is the deepest. Such love invades the heart when it is young, lodging itself in the most secret recesses of the memory :
" I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the
Ring In summer time, and on the Down how larks and linnets
sing High in the sun. The wind comes off the sea, and, oh,
the air ! I never knew till now that life in old days was so fair, But now I know it in this filthy rat-infested ditch, When every shell must kill or spare, and God alone
knows which, And I am made a beast of prey, and this trench is my
lair— My God ! I never knew till now that those days were
so fair. And we assault in half-an-hour, and—it's a silly thing, I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the
Ring." |
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