The samphire gatherer to the cliff-face clings 
Halfway 'twixt sky and sea:
She has but youth and courage for her wings,
And always Death about her labour sings,
And fain would loosen steady hand or knee, 
And cast her down among life's broken things,
But danger shakes with fitful murmurings 
No such brave heart as she. 

The gulls are crying in her heedless ears 
That strength is made a mock 
At grips with the great sea. She has no fears, 
But treads with naked feet the stair of rock 
That has but known for years on weary years 
The touch of sea-gulls' wings, the sea that rears 
Her waves against it with recurrent shock, 
The sun that burns and sears.

She has no fears because her daily bread 
She sees made manifest 
Here in the pendulous weed that tempts her tread 
Upon so wild and dangerous a quest. 
The samphire sways and dangles overhead 
And home is far below; and in that nest 
Are little hungry mouths that must be fed, 
Though Danger be her neighbour and her guest. 

Night brings her little children to her knee 
For daily bread to pray; 
Their father tosses on the open sea, 
Where flashing shoals of silver dolphins play. 
But hungry mouths must feed while he's away, 
So the brave mother clambers day by day,
And pulls the samphire trails, and knows not she 
Is of that school of saints that wear no bay,
But do God's work the still and splendid way. 

It faces west, and round the back and sides
High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs,
And sweep against the roof. Wild honeysucks
Climb on the walls, and seem to sprout a wish
(If we may fancy wish of trees and plants)
To overtop the apple trees hard-by.

Red roses, lilacs, variegated box
Are there in plenty, and such hardy flowers
As flourish best untrained. Adjoining these
Are herbs and esculents; and farther still
A field; then cottages with trees, and last
The distant hills and sky.

Behind, the scene is wilder. Heath and furze
Are everything that seems to grow and thrive
Upon the uneven ground. A stunted thorn
Stands here and there, indeed; and from a pit
An oak uprises, Springing from a seed
Dropped by some bird a hundred years ago.

                                      In days bygone—
Long gone—my father's mother, who is now
Blest with the blest, would take me out to walk.
At such a time I once inquired of her
How looked the spot when first she settled here.
The answer I remember. 'Fifty years
Have passed since then, my child, and change has marked
The face of all things. Yonder garden-plots
And orchards were uncultivated slopes
O'ergrown with bramble bushes, furze and thorn:
That road a narrow path shut in by ferns,
Which, almost trees, obscured the passers-by.

Our house stood quite alone, and those tall firs
And beeches were not planted. Snakes and efts
Swarmed in the summer days, and nightly bats
Would fly about our bedrooms. Heathcroppers
Lived on the hills, and were our only friends;
So wild it was when we first settled here.'