Happy Times

Thoroughly pleasurable day with an old friend in the morning, and a visit to Emsworth on Chichester harbour with my best beloved. The foreshore is always interesting, liked this enormous chain partially taken over by nature again.

And a wee boat or two for Hobbs:-)

Kipling's poem reminds me of the dangers of rising sea levels in vulnerable Chichester harbour.


Look you, our foreshore stretches far through sea-gate, dyke, and groin -
Made land all, that our fathers made, where the flats and the fairway join.
They forced the sea a sea-league back. They died, and their work stood fast.
We were born to peace in the lee of the dykes, but the time of our peace is past.

Far off, the full tide clambers and slips, mouthing and testing all,
Nipping the flanks of the water-gates, baying along the wall;
Turning the shingle, returning the shingle, changing the set of the sand...
We are too far from the beach, men say, to know how the outworks stand.

So we come down, uneasy, to look, uneasily pacing the beach.
These are the dykes our fathers made: we have never known a breach.
Time and again has the gale blown by and we were not afraid;
Now we come only to look at the dykes - at the dykes our fathers made.

from The Dykes
Rudyard Kipling