The Lark over the Sussex Weald from Devils Dyke Sussex Art

Description

‘The Lark over the Sussex Weald from Devils Dyke Sussex Art’.

Sussex Art

Painters and poets have historically celebrated this view, it comes to my mind the poem High Flight. Poem by John Gillespie Magee

‘Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.’

The Lark ascending

The Lark Ascending is a short, single-movement work by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, inspired by the 1881 poem of the same name by the English writer George Meredith. It was originally for violin and piano, completed in 1914, but not performed until 1920.

The summer of 2019, one clear day I sat on the grass in this very spot when I heard it first, a lark. Instinctively i found myself looking up scrutinising the sky to subsequently find it, up there, in the air singing its defiant rather loud tune.

Can you spot the two larks in this print? As it happens in nature you will have to put some effort to find them. Larks in Mythology and literature have several meanings, they stand for daybreak as in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 “Like to the lark at break of day arising. From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate; ..”