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Well, for someone who looks like me you wonder where Alfred Hitchcock is.

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The Ballad of the White Horse

DEDICATION

Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?

Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.

Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall not wake with ballad strings
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.

Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the broidery of Bayeux
The England of that dawn remains,
And this of Alfred and the Danes
Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns
Too English to be true.

Of a good king on an island
That ruled once on a time;
And as he walked by an apple tree
There came green devils out of the sea
With sea-plants trailing heavily
And tracks of opal slime.

Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;
His days as our days ran,
He also looked forth for an hour
On peopled plains and skies that lower,
From those few windows in the tower
That is the head of a man.

But who shall look from Alfred's hood

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poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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Book VII: Ethandune, the Last Charge

Away in the waste of White Horse Down
An idle child alone
Played some small game through hours that pass,
And patiently would pluck the grass,
Patiently push the stone.

On the lean, green edge for ever,
Where the blank chalk touched the turf,
The child played on, alone, divine,
As a child plays on the last line
That sunders sand and surf.

For he dwelleth in high divisions
Too simple to understand,
Seeing on what morn of mystery
The Uncreated rent the sea
With roarings, from the land.

Through the long infant hours like days
He built one tower in vain--
Piled up small stones to make a town,
And evermore the stones fell down,
And he piled them up again.

And crimson kings on battle-towers,
And saints on Gothic spires,
And hermits on their peaks of snow,
And heroes on their pyres,

And patriots riding royally,
That rush the rocking town,
Stretch hands, and hunger and aspire,
Seeking to mount where high and higher,
The child whom Time can never tire,
Sings over White Horse Down.

And this was the might of Alfred,
At the ending of the way;
That of such smiters, wise or wild,
He was least distant from the child,
Piling the stones all day.

For Eldred fought like a frank hunter
That killeth and goeth home;
And Mark had fought because all arms
Rang like the name of Rome.

And Colan fought with a double mind,
Moody and madly gay;
But Alfred fought as gravely

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poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
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Book II: The Gathering of the Chiefs

Up across windy wastes and up
Went Alfred over the shaws,
Shaken of the joy of giants,
The joy without a cause.

In the slopes away to the western bays,
Where blows not ever a tree,
He washed his soul in the west wind
And his body in the sea.

And he set to rhyme his ale-measures,
And he sang aloud his laws,
Because of the joy of the giants,
The joy without a cause.

The King went gathering Wessex men,
As grain out of the chaff
The few that were alive to die,
Laughing, as littered skulls that lie
After lost battles turn to the sky
An everlasting laugh.

The King went gathering Christian men,
As wheat out of the husk;
Eldred, the Franklin by the sea,
And Mark, the man from Italy,
And Colan of the Sacred Tree,
From the old tribe on Usk.

The rook croaked homeward heavily,
The west was clear and warm,
The smoke of evening food and ease
Rose like a blue tree in the trees
When he came to Eldred's farm.

But Eldred's farm was fallen awry,
Like an old cripple's bones,
And Eldred's tools were red with rust,
And on his well was a green crust,
And purple thistles upward thrust,
Between the kitchen stones.

But smoke of some good feasting
Went upwards evermore,
And Eldred's doors stood wide apart
For loitering foot or labouring cart,
And Eldred's great and foolish heart
Stood open like his door.

A mighty man was Eldred,

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poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
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Book VIII: The Scouring of the Horse

In the years of the peace of Wessex,
When the good King sat at home;
Years following on that bloody boon
When she that stands above the moon
Stood above death at Ethandune
And saw his kingdom come--

When the pagan people of the sea
Fled to their palisades,
Nailed there with javelins to cling
And wonder smote the pirate king,
And brought him to his christening
And the end of all his raids.

(For not till the night's blue slate is wiped
Of its last star utterly,
And fierce new signs writ there to read,
Shall eyes with such amazement heed,
As when a great man knows indeed
A greater thing than he.)

And there came to his chrism-loosing
Lords of all lands afar,
And a line was drawn north-westerly
That set King Egbert's empire free,
Giving all lands by the northern sea
To the sons of the northern star.

In the days of the rest of Alfred,
When all these things were done,
And Wessex lay in a patch of peace,
Like a dog in a patch of sun--

The King sat in his orchard,
Among apples green and red,
With the little book in his bosom
And the sunshine on his head.

And he gathered the songs of simple men
That swing with helm and hod,
And the alms he gave as a Christian
Like a river alive with fishes ran;
And he made gifts to a beggar man
As to a wandering god.

And he gat good laws of the ancient kings,
Like treasure out of the tombs;
And many a thief in thorny nook,
Or noble in sea-stained turret shook,
For the opening of his iron book,

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poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
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Book V: Ethandune, the First Stroke

King Guthrum was a dread king,
Like death out of the north;
Shrines without name or number
He rent and rolled as lumber,
From Chester to the Humber
He drove his foemen forth.

The Roman villas heard him
In the valley of the Thames,
Come over the hills roaring
Above their roofs, and pouring
On spire and stair and flooring
Brimstone and pitch and flames.

Sheer o'er the great chalk uplands
And the hill of the Horse went he,
Till high on Hampshire beacons
He saw the southern sea.

High on the heights of Wessex
He saw the southern brine,
And turned him to a conquered land,
And where the northern thornwoods stand,
And the road parts on either hand,
There came to him a sign.

King Guthrum was a war-chief,
A wise man in the field,
And though he prospered well, and knew
How Alfred's folk were sad and few,
Not less with weighty care he drew
Long lines for pike and shield.

King Guthrum lay on the upper land,
On a single road at gaze,
And his foe must come with lean array,
Up the left arm of the cloven way,
To the meeting of the ways.

And long ere the noise of armour,
An hour ere the break of light,
The woods awoke with crash and cry,
And the birds sprang clamouring harsh and high,
And the rabbits ran like an elves' army
Ere Alfred came in sight.

The live wood came at Guthrum,
On foot and claw and wing,
The nests were noisy overhead,
For Alfred and the star of red,

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poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
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Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story - Part V.

Said the high hill, in the morning: 'Look on me--
'Behold, sweet earth, sweet sister sky, behold
'The red flames on my peaks, and how my pines
'Are cressets of pure gold; my quarried scars
'Of black crevase and shadow-fill'd canon,
'Are trac'd in silver mist. How on my breast
'Hang the soft purple fringes of the night;
'Close to my shoulder droops the weary moon,
'Dove-pale, into the crimson surf the sun
'Drives up before his prow; and blackly stands
'On my slim, loftiest peak, an eagle, with
'His angry eyes set sunward, while his cry
'Falls fiercely back from all my ruddy heights;
'And his bald eaglets, in their bare, broad nest,
'Shrill pipe their angry echoes: ''Sun, arise,
''And show me that pale dove, beside her nest,
''Which I shall strike with piercing beak and tear
''With iron talons for my hungry young.''
And that mild dove, secure for yet a space,
Half waken'd, turns her ring'd and glossy neck
To watch dawn's ruby pulsing on her breast,
And see the first bright golden motes slip down
The gnarl'd trunks about her leaf-deep nest,
Nor sees nor fears the eagle on the peak.

* * * * *

'Aye, lassie, sing--I'll smoke my pipe the while,
'And let it be a simple, bonnie song,
'Such as an old, plain man can gather in
'His dulling ear, and feel it slipping thro'
'The cold, dark, stony places of his heart.'
'Yes, sing, sweet Kate,' said Alfred in her ear;
'I often heard you singing in my dreams
'When I was far away the winter past.'
So Katie on the moonlit window lean'd,
And in the airy silver of her voice
Sang of the tender, blue 'Forget-me-not.'

Could every blossom find a voice,
And sing a strain to me;
I know where I would place my choice,
Which my delight should be.
I would not choose the lily tall,
The rose from musky grot;
But I would still my minstrel call
The blue 'Forget-me-not!'

And I on mossy bank would lie
Of brooklet, ripp'ling clear;

[...] Read more

poem by Isabella Valancy Crawford
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Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story - Part VI.

'Who curseth Sorrow knows her not at all.
Dark matrix she, from which the human soul
Has its last birth; whence, with its misty thews,
Close-knitted in her blackness, issues out;
Strong for immortal toil up such great heights,
As crown o'er crown rise through Eternity,
Without the loud, deep clamour of her wail,
The iron of her hands; the biting brine
Of her black tears; the Soul but lightly built
of indeterminate spirit, like a mist
Would lapse to Chaos in soft, gilded dreams,
As mists fade in the gazing of the sun.
Sorrow, dark mother of the soul, arise!
Be crown'd with spheres where thy bless'd children dwell,
Who, but for thee, were not. No lesser seat
Be thine, thou Helper of the Universe,
Than planet on planet pil'd!--thou instrument,
Close-clasp'd within the great Creative Hand!'

* * * * *

The Land had put his ruddy gauntlet on,
Of Harvest gold, to dash in Famine's face.
And like a vintage wain, deep dy'd with juice,
The great moon falter'd up the ripe, blue sky,
Drawn by silver stars--like oxen white
And horn'd with rays of light--Down the rich land
Malcolm's small valleys, fill'd with grain, lip-high,
Lay round a lonely hill that fac'd the moon,
And caught the wine-kiss of its ruddy light.
A cusp'd, dark wood caught in its black embrace
The valleys and the hill, and from its wilds,
Spic'd with dark cedars, cried the Whip-poor-will.
A crane, belated, sail'd across the moon;
On the bright, small, close link'd lakes green islets lay,
Dusk knots of tangl'd vines, or maple boughs,
Or tuft'd cedars, boss'd upon the waves.
The gay, enamell'd children of the swamp
Roll'd a low bass to treble, tinkling notes
Of little streamlets leaping from the woods.
Close to old Malcolm's mills, two wooden jaws
Bit up the water on a sloping floor;
And here, in season, rush'd the great logs down,
To seek the river winding on its way.
In a green sheen, smooth as a Naiad's locks,
The water roll'd between the shudd'ring jaws--
Then on the river level roar'd and reel'd--
In ivory-arm'd conflict with itself.
'Look down,' said Alfred, 'Katie, look and see
'How that but pictures my mad heart to you.

[...] Read more

poem by Isabella Valancy Crawford
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Woman of Magic

“Oh woman of magic, charms, spells and strong love potions
will you make me a philtre to give Sarah Green a notion
to fall in love with me and to hold out her left hand
to do as I ask, to marry and wear my gold band? ”

“Tell me, does this Sarah Green know that you exist,
does she give you the eye that flutters so quick?
Does she move gracefully and glance over her shoulder,
smile and pucker her lips, or do something bolder? ”

“No, unfortunately she does none of these desirable things,
but each time I see her she makes my heart sing.
I see her in the village each day and in my dreams at night,
and if I can’t have her I will turn out my life light.”

“It appears to me that you are nothing but a lovesick fool,
how could this Sarah Green make you so drool?
But if I did spend time making you an extra special brew
what could you give me to make your wish come true? ”

“I am by no means a wealthy man, of this you can be assured
and if I was to make you an offer you may think it absurd.
However, are we talking about money in the greatest of sums,
or are we talking about the smallest of crumbs? ”

“A moment ago you said you would turn your life light out,
now what is your life worth, what value would you shout?
It seems that my potions would be worth everything you’ve got,
and if you’ve nothing, you will do anything, am I right, or not? ”

“You mean that money need not be the only method of payment,
and there are other ways to pay for our agreement?
What does one normally have to do to leave you fulfilled,
surely you won’t ask for someone to be killed? ”

“Oh no, no, I wouldn’t sink so low as to hire an assassin
with my spells I can eliminate, alter or fashion.
Now listen to what my dreams have placed on my agenda,
I require a girl child on May 1st whom I’ll name Diana.”

“So you want me to find and kidnap a female child or baby
before ten months has passed, or eleven maybe? ”
“Why don’t you listen properly to what I say you stupid man?
I must conceive a baby in the way only two people can.”

“What! You actually want me to make a baby with you
and you bear my child, and be its mother too?
I don’t know if I can do this, you are so ugly, old and wizen,
my love is for Sarah, and to her only it is to be given.”

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poem by Orlando Belo
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Book IV: The Woman in the Forest

Thick thunder of the snorting swine,
Enormous in the gloam,
Rending among all roots that cling,
And the wild horses whinnying,
Were the night's noises when the King
Shouldering his harp, went home.

With eyes of owl and feet of fox,
Full of all thoughts he went;
He marked the tilt of the pagan camp,
The paling of pine, the sentries' tramp,
And the one great stolen altar-lamp
Over Guthrum in his tent.

By scrub and thorn in Ethandune
That night the foe had lain;
Whence ran across the heather grey
The old stones of a Roman way;
And in a wood not far away
The pale road split in twain.

He marked the wood and the cloven ways
With an old captain's eyes,
And he thought how many a time had he
Sought to see Doom he could not see;
How ruin had come and victory,
And both were a surprise.

Even so he had watched and wondered
Under Ashdown from the plains;
With Ethelred praying in his tent,
Till the white hawthorn swung and bent,
As Alfred rushed his spears and rent
The shield-wall of the Danes.

Even so he had watched and wondered,
Knowing neither less nor more,
Till all his lords lay dying,
And axes on axes plying,
Flung him, and drove him flying
Like a pirate to the shore.

Wise he had been before defeat,
And wise before success;
Wise in both hours and ignorant,
Knowing neither more nor less.

As he went down to the river-hut
He knew a night-shade scent,
Owls did as evil cherubs rise,

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poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
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Book VI: Ethandune, the Slaying of the Chiefs

As the sea flooding the flat sands
Flew on the sea-born horde,
The two hosts shocked with dust and din,
Left of the Latian paladin,
Clanged all Prince Harold's howling kin
On Colan and the sword.

Crashed in the midst on Marcus,
Ogier with Guthrum by,
And eastward of such central stir,
Far to the right and faintlier,
The house of Elf the harp-player,
Struck Eldred's with a cry.

The centre swat for weariness,
Stemming the screaming horde,
And wearily went Colan's hands
That swung King Alfred's sword.

But like a cloud of morning
To eastward easily,
Tall Eldred broke the sea of spears
As a tall ship breaks the sea.

His face like a sanguine sunset,
His shoulder a Wessex down,
His hand like a windy hammer-stroke;
Men could not count the crests he broke,
So fast the crests went down.

As the tall white devil of the Plague
Moves out of Asian skies,
With his foot on a waste of cities
And his head in a cloud of flies;

Or purple and peacock skies grow dark
With a moving locust-tower;
Or tawny sand-winds tall and dry,
Like hell's red banners beat and fly,
When death comes out of Araby,
Was Eldred in his hour.

But while he moved like a massacre
He murmured as in sleep,
And his words were all of low hedges
And little fields and sheep.

Even as he strode like a pestilence,
That strides from Rhine to Rome,
He thought how tall his beans might be

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poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
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Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story - Part III.

The great farm house of Malcolm Graem stood
Square shoulder'd and peak roof'd upon a hill,
With many windows looking everywhere;
So that no distant meadow might lie hid,
Nor corn-field hide its gold--nor lowing herd
Browse in far pastures, out of Malcolm's ken.
He lov'd to sit, grim, grey, and somewhat stern,
And thro' the smoke-clouds from his short clay pipe
Look out upon his riches; while his thoughts
Swung back and forth between the bleak, stern past,
And the near future, for his life had come
To that close balance, when, a pendulum,
The memory swings between me 'Then' and 'Now';
His seldom speech ran thus two diff'rent ways:
'When I was but a laddie, this I did';
Or, 'Katie, in the Fall I'll see to build
'Such fences or such sheds about the place;
'And next year, please the Lord, another barn.'
Katie's gay garden foam'd about the walls,
'Leagur'd the prim-cut modern sills, and rush'd
Up the stone walls--and broke on the peak'd roof.
And Katie's lawn was like a Poet's sward,
Velvet and sheer and di'monded with dew;
For such as win their wealth most aptly take
Smooth, urban ways and blend them with their own;
And Katie's dainty raiment was as fine
As the smooth, silken petals of the rose;
And her light feet, her nimble mind and voice,
In city schools had learn'd the city's ways,
And grafts upon the healthy, lonely vine
They shone, eternal blossoms 'mid the fruit.
For Katie had her sceptre in her hand
And wielded it right queenly there and here,
In dairy, store-room, kitchen--ev'ry spot
Where women's ways were needed on the place.
And Malcolm took her through his mighty fields,
And taught her lore about the change of crops;
And how to see a handsome furrow plough'd;
And how to choose the cattle for the mart;
And how to know a fair day's work when done;
And where to plant young orchards; for he said,
'God sent a lassie, but I need a son--
'Bethankit for His mercies all the same.'
And Katie, when he said it, thought of Max--
Who had been gone two winters and two springs,
And sigh'd, and thought, 'Would he not be your son?'
But all in silence, for she had too much
Of the firm will of Malcolm in her soul
To think of shaking that deep-rooted rock;
But hop'd the crystal current of his love

[...] Read more

poem by Isabella Valancy Crawford
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Book I: The Vision of the King

Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.

Before the gods that made the gods
Had drunk at dawn their fill,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was hoary on the hill.

Age beyond age on British land,
Aeons on aeons gone,
Was peace and war in western hills,
And the White Horse looked on.

For the White Horse knew England
When there was none to know;
He saw the first oar break or bend,
He saw heaven fall and the world end,
O God, how long ago.

For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.

For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.

When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.

When the ends of the earth came marching in
To torch and cresset gleam.
And the roads of the world that lead to Rome
Were filled with faces that moved like foam,
Like faces in a dream.

And men rode out of the eastern lands,
Broad river and burning plain;
Trees that are Titan flowers to see,
And tiger skies, striped horribly,
With tints of tropic rain.

Where Ind's enamelled peaks arise

[...] Read more

poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
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Euphelia

As roam'd a pilgrim o'er the mountain drear,
On whose lone verge the foaming billows roar,
The wail of hopeless sorrow pierc'd his ear,
And swell'd at distance on the sounding shore.

The mourner breath'd her deep complaint to night,
Her moan she mingled with the rapid blast,
That bar'd her bosom in its wasting flight,
And o'er the earth her scatter'd tresses cast,

"Ye winds," she cried, "still heave the lab'ring deep,
The mountain shake, the howling forest rend;
Still dash the shiv'ring fragments from the steep,
Nor for a wretch like me the storm suspend.

"Ah, wherefore wish the rising storm to spare?
Ah, why implore the raging winds to save?
What refuge can the breast, where lives despair,
Desire but death?--what shelter but the grave?

"To me congenial is the gloom of night,
The savage howlings that infest the air;
I unappall'd can view the fatal light
That issues from the pointed lightning's glare.

"And yet erewhile, if night her shadows threw
O'er the known woodlands of my native vale,
Fancy in visions wild the landscape drew,
And swell'd with boding sounds the whisp'ring gale.

"But deep despair has arm'd my timid soul,
And agony has numb'd the throb of fear;
Taught a weak heart its terrors to controul,
And more to court than shun the danger near.

"Yet could I welcome the return of light,
Its glimm'ring beam might guide my searching eye;
The sacred spot might then emerge from night
On which a lover's bleeding relics lie.

"For sure 'twas here, as late a shepherd stray'd,
Bewilder'd, o'er the mountain's dreary bound,
Close to the pointed cliff he saw him laid,
Where heav'd the waters of the deep around.

"Alas, no longer could his heart endure
The woes that heart was doom'd for me to prove;
He sought for death--for death the only cure
That fate has not refus'd to hopeless love!

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poem by Helen Maria Williams
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Sneaky With the Looks

Sneaky with the looks that they give.

I perceive myself alone.
I feel a curiosity directed.
At first I am not sure,
If the curiosity is directed towards me.
And I look around.
Nothing is there to block my steps.
And I begin to whistle in nervousness.
To then talk to myself...
In a calming peacefulness.
I admit is beginning to get a bit restless.

Sneaky with the looks that they give.

I am among the trees.
Alone in fresh Spring breezes.

Sneaky with the looks that they give.

I begin to hear the chirping of birds.
Conversing to break the silence,
With a charm that does not disturb.
And they fly high between the trees.
Trying to hide within the leaves.

Sneaky with the looks that they give.

I follow a path made clear of obstacles.
I stop.
So does the chirping.
I pick up a small rock,
To toss as I also pick up a twig.
There is a wind.
And I continue my journey.

Wings flap as if there is clapping.
I adjust my cap.
And two squirrels chase...
Across my path!
To play tag and hide and seek.
I stop to watch.

Sneaky with the looks that they give.

I look up!
And there they all sit.
As if in conference on a branch.
Together...
Laughing!

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Me

if you weren't you, who would you like to be?

Paul McCartney Gustav Mahler
Alfred Jarry John Coltrane
Charlie Mingus Claude Debussy
Wordsworth Monet Bach and Blake

Charlie Parker Pierre Bonnard
Leonardo Bessie Smith
Fidel Castro Jackson Pollock
Gaudi Milton Munch and Berg

Belà Bartók Henri Rousseau
Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns
Lukas Cranach Shostakovich
Kropotkin Ringo George and John

William Burroughs Francis Bacon
Dylan Thomas Luther King
H. P. Lovecraft T. S. Eliot
D. H. Lawrence Roland Kirk

Salvatore Giuliano
Andy Warhol Paul Uzanne
Kafka Camus Ensor Rothko
Jacques Prévert and Manfred Mann

Marx Dostoevsky
Bakunin Ray Bradbury
Miles Davis Trotsky
Stravinsky and Poe

Danilo Dolci Napoleon Solo
St John of the Cross and
The Marquis de Sade

Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Rimbaud Claes Oldenburg
Adrian Mitchell and Marcel Duchamp

James Joyce and Hemingway
Hitchcock and Bunuel
Donald McKinlay Thelonius Monk

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Matthias Grunewald
Philip Jones Grifths and Roger McGough

Guillaume Apollinaire
Cannonball Adderley

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poem by Adrian Henri
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Dedication

Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?

Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.

Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall not wake with ballad strings
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.

Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the broidery of Bayeux
The England of that dawn remains,
And this of Alfred and the Danes
Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns
Too English to be true.

Of a good king on an island
That ruled once on a time;
And as he walked by an apple tree
There came green devils out of the sea
With sea-plants trailing heavily
And tracks of opal slime.

Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;
His days as our days ran,
He also looked forth for an hour
On peopled plains and skies that lower,
From those few windows in the tower
That is the head of a man.

But who shall look from Alfred's hood
Or breathe his breath alive?
His century like a small dark cloud

[...] Read more

poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Book III: The Harp of Alfred

In a tree that yawned and twisted
The King's few goods were flung,
A mass-book mildewed, line by line,
And weapons and a skin of wine,
And an old harp unstrung.

By the yawning tree in the twilight
The King unbound his sword,
Severed the harp of all his goods,
And there in the cool and soundless woods
Sounded a single chord.

Then laughed; and watched the finches flash,
The sullen flies in swarm,
And went unarmed over the hills,
With the harp upon his arm,
Until he came to the White Horse Vale
And saw across the plains,
In the twilight high and far and fell,
Like the fiery terraces of hell,
The camp fires of the Danes--

The fires of the Great Army
That was made of iron men,
Whose lights of sacrilege and scorn
Ran around England red as morn,
Fires over Glastonbury Thorn--
Fires out on Ely Fen.

And as he went by White Horse Vale
He saw lie wan and wide
The old horse graven, God knows when,
By gods or beasts or what things then
Walked a new world instead of men
And scrawled on the hill-side.

And when he came to White Horse Down
The great White Horse was grey,
For it was ill scoured of the weed,
And lichen and thorn could crawl and feed,
Since the foes of settled house and creed
Had swept old works away.

King Alfred gazed all sorrowful
At thistle and mosses grey,
Then laughed; and watched the finches flash,
Till a rally of Danes with shield and bill
Rolled drunk over the dome of the hill,
And, hearing of his harp and skill,
They dragged him to their play.

[...] Read more

poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Warrior's Return

Sir Walter returned from the far Holy Land,
And a blood-tinctured falchion he bore;
But such precious blood as now darkened his sword
Had never distained it before.

Fast fluttered his heart as his own castle towers
He saw on the mountain's green height;
"My wife, and my son!" he exclaimed, while his tears
Obscured for some moments his sight.

For terror now whispered, the wife he had left
Full fifteen long twelvemonths before,
The child he had clasp't in his farewell embrace,
Might both, then, alas! be no more.

Then, sighing, he thought of his Editha's tears
As his steed bore him far from her sight,
And her accents of love, while she fervently cried,
"Great God! guard his life in the fight!"

And then he remembered, in language half formed
How his child strove to bid him adieu;
While scarcely he now can believe, as a man,
That infant may soon meet his view.

But should he not live!....To escape from that fear,
He eagerly spurred his bold steed:
Nor stopped he again, till his own castle moat
Forbade on the way to proceed.

'T was day-break: yet still past the windows he saw
Busy forms lightly trip to and fro:
Blest sight! that she lives," he exclaimed with smile,
"Those symptoms of housewifery show:

"For, stranger to sloth, and on business intent,
The dawn calls her forth from her bed;
And see, through the castle, all busy appear,
By her to their duty still led."

That instant the knight by the warder was seen,
For far flamed the cross on his breast;
And while loud blew the horn, now a smile, now a tear,
Sir Walter's mix't feelings expressed.

'Tis I, my loved vassals!" the warrior exclaimed,....
The voice reached his Editha's ears;
Who, breathless and speechless, soon rushed to his arms,
Her transport betraying by tears.

[...] Read more

poem by Amelia Opie
Added by Poetry Lover
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Discoverer Of The North Cape. A Leaf From King Alfred's Orosius. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)

Othere, the old sea-captain,
Who dwelt in Helgoland,
To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth,
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
Which he held in his brown right hand.

His figure was tall and stately,
Like a boy's his eye appeared;
His hair was yellow as hay,
But threads of a silvery gray
Gleamed in his tawny beard.

Hearty and hale was Othere,
His cheek had the color of oak;
With a kind of laugh in his speech,
Like the sea-tide on a beach,
As unto the King he spoke.

And Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Had a book upon his knees,
And wrote down the wondrous tale
Of him who was first to sail
Into the Arctic seas.

'So far I live to the northward,
No man lives north of me;
To the east are wild mountain-chains;
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.

'So far I live to the northward,
From the harbor of Skeringes-hale,
If you only sailed by day,
With a fair wind all the way,
More than a month would you sail.

'I own six hundred reindeer,
With sheep and swine beside;
I have tribute from the Finns,
Whalebone and reindeer-skins,
And ropes of walrus-hide.

'I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old seafaring men
Came to me now and then,
With their sagas of the seas;--

'Of Iceland and of Greenland,
And the stormy Hebrides,

[...] Read more

poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Added by Poetry Lover
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It Looks Like Rain

I stand at the window
Looking out, looking out at the grey
After getting up and reading the paper today
Sometimes I just want to crawl back in bed
Pull the covers over my eyes
This world is so full of trouble
All the war planes in the sky
Chorus:
And it looks like rain
Cant you hear the thunder
And it looks like rain
Dont it make you wonder
Killers make the front page
Good deeds go unnoticed
Seems like, like theres no change
No matter what the vote is
It used to be we were
All looking out for everybody else
But now it seems the only law is
Every man for himself
(chorus)
And it looks like rain
Cant you hear the thunder
It looks like rain
Dont it make you
And it looks like rain
Falling down my eyes
It looks like rain
Dont you wonder why
I hear, hear it pounding
In the courtrooms and halls
I hear, hear it sounding
Through these paper-thin walls
I can hear people lying under oath
Lovers breaking their vows
I dont want to give up hope
Is it too late now
Chorus:
And it looks like rain
Cant you hear the thunder
It looks like rain
Dont it make you
And it looks like rain
Falling down my eyes
It looks like rain
Dont you wonder why
And it looks like rain
Cant you hear the thunder
It looks like rain
Dont it make you

[...] Read more

song performed by Toto
Added by Lucian Velea
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