Laments the time, when fair and elegant
Beauty first laugh'd from out thy joyous bowers".

From the ruined fragments we mentally reconstruct the scene of the
interior, the single courtyard in the centre, the two-story buildings
all around with the chapel going up through both stories, and we note
with astonishment the comparative convenience and comfort of the
arrangements of the compact little fortalice.

Certainly Bodiam (or Bojum, as it is pronounced locally) is the most
picturesque castle in the south, many say in the whole, of England.
Nestling in the little valley, surrounded by luxuriant greenery, it has
not the impressive grandeur of the stronghold flaunting its strength at
the head of some precipitous cliff, or bidding defiance to the hungry
seas, but it has a beauty more at one with the spirit of Sussex and the
south.

And yet, Bodiam is a place of inviolate mystery. You can fall in love
with its unique situation, with its delightful lily-covered,
bird-haunted setting; you can be impressed by its note of artistic
completeness; but always there is something of loneliness and horror
about the place. Its walls are grey, but not with the grey of other
castles. It is a cold, pitiless grey, no matter how the sun shine, no
matter how the water throw up again the quivering light. There is a
shudder in the air on the blithest summer day. Perhaps it is that
places, no less than men, gradually take upon them a personality. If
that is so, then surely Bodiam has taken the personality of its old
founder, Dalyngrigge, a bleak enough man, if records speak truly, a man
dark in deed and light of word.

At Bodiam we leave this Enchanted Garden; and as we go we begin to
wonder that a place so rich in memories and in charm has no
representative poet, or, indeed, school of poets. Sussex in general
seems to have been sadly neglected by our singers. Kipling has
probably sung most in her praises; but even for Kipling the great chalk
downs have always been Sussex. And most of our other poets--Habberton
Lulham, Arthur F. Bell, Rosamund Watson, Wilfred Scawen Blunt--have
followed in his steps. Only occasionally has one ventured down into
the marshlands and the low rolling hills and the little river valleys
in quest of beauty. And yet beauty indescribable is here for the
seeking. Probably the poet who knows us best is Ford Maddox Hueffer,
whose volume, _The Cinque Ports_, contains some magnificent
word-pictures of