From the
Ypres Tower of Rye or the Gun Garden below it, you look only across
the level and empty Marsh which sinks beyond Camber Castle
imperceptibly into the greyness and barrenness of the sea. To the
east, across the flat emptiness, the Rother crawls seaward; to the
west across the Marsh, as once across the sea, Winchelsea rises
against the woods, and beyond, far away, the darkness of Fairlight
hangs like a cloud twixt sea and sky.
Indeed, to liken Rye to any other place is to do her wrong, for both
in herself and in that landscape over which she broods, there is
enough beauty and enough character to give her a life and a meaning
altogether her own. From afar off, from Winchelsea, for instance, in
the sunlight, she seems like a town in a missal, crowned by that
church which seems so much bigger than it is, gay and warm and yet
with something of the greyness of the sea and the sea wind about her, a
place that, as so few English places do, altogether makes a picture in
the mind, and is at unity with itself.
And from within she seems not less complete, a thing wholly ancient,
delightful, with a picturesque and yet homely beauty that is the child
of ancientness.
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