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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Ballad of the White Horse</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">DEDICATION </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Of great limbs gone to chaos,<br>A great face turned to night--<br>Why bend above a shapeless shroud<br>Seeking in such archaic cloud<br>Sight of strong lords and light?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Where seven sunken Englands<br>Lie buried one by one,<br>Why should one idle spade, I wonder,<br>Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder<br>To smoke and choke the sun?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In cloud of clay so cast to heaven<br>What shape shall man discern?<br>These lords may light the mystery<br>Of mastery or victory,<br>And these ride high in history,<br>But these shall not return.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Gored on the Norman gonfalon<br>The Golden Dragon died:<br>We shall not wake with ballad strings <br>The good time of the smaller things,<br>We shall not see the holy kings<br>Ride down by Severn side.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured<br>As the broidery of Bayeux<br>The England of that dawn remains,<br>And this of Alfred and the Danes<br>Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns<br>Too English to be true.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Of a good king on an island<br>That ruled once on a time;<br>And as he walked by an apple tree<br>There came green devils out of the sea<br>With sea-plants trailing heavily<br>And tracks of opal slime.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;<br>His days as our days ran,<br>He also looked forth for an hour<br>On peopled plains and skies that lower,<br>From those few windows in the tower<br>That is the head of a man.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But who shall look from Alfred's hood<br>Or breathe his breath alive?<br>His century like a small dark cloud<br>Drifts far; it is an eyeless crowd,<br>Where the tortured trumpets scream aloud<br>And the dense arrows drive.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Lady, by one light only<br>We look from Alfred's eyes,<br>We know he saw athwart the wreck<br>The sign that hangs about your neck,<br>Where One more than Melchizedek<br>Is dead and never dies.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Therefore I bring these rhymes to you<br>Who brought the cross to me,<br>Since on you flaming without flaw<br>I saw the sign that Guthrum saw<br>When he let break his ships of awe,<br>And laid peace on the sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Do you remember when we went<br>Under a dragon moon,<br>And `mid volcanic tints of night<br>Walked where they fought the unknown fight<br>And saw black trees on the battle-height,<br>Black thorn on Ethandune?<br>And I thought, "I will go with you,<br>As man with God has gone,<br>And wander with a wandering star,<br>The wandering heart of things that are,<br>The fiery cross of love and war<br>That like yourself, goes on."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">O go you onward; where you are<br>Shall honour and laughter be,<br>Past purpled forest and pearled foam,<br>God's winged pavilion free to roam,<br>Your face, that is a wandering home,<br>A flying home for me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ride through the silent earthquake lands,<br>Wide as a waste is wide,<br>Across these days like deserts, when<br>Pride and a little scratching pen<br>Have dried and split the hearts of men,<br>Heart of the heroes, ride.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Up through an empty house of stars,<br>Being what heart you are,<br>Up the inhuman steeps of space<br>As on a staircase go in grace,<br>Carrying the firelight on your face<br>Beyond the loneliest star.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Take these; in memory of the hour <br>We strayed a space from home<br>And saw the smoke-hued hamlets, quaint<br>With Westland king and Westland saint,<br>And watched the western glory faint<br>Along the road to Frome.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"></a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>BOOK I THE VISION OF THE KING</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Before the gods that made the gods<br>Had seen their sunrise pass,<br>The White Horse of the White Horse Vale<br>Was cut out of the grass.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Before the gods that made the gods<br>Had drunk at dawn their fill,<br>The White Horse of the White Horse Vale<br>Was hoary on the hill.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Age beyond age on British land,<br>Aeons on aeons gone,<br>Was peace and war in western hills,<br>And the White Horse looked on.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For the White Horse knew England<br>When there was none to know;<br>He saw the first oar break or bend,<br>He saw heaven fall and the world end,<br>O God, how long ago.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For the end of the world was long ago,<br>And all we dwell to-day<br>As children of some second birth,<br>Like a strange people left on earth<br>After a judgment day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For the end of the world was long ago,<br>When the ends of the world waxed free,<br>When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,<br>And the sun drowned in the sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky<br>And whoso hearkened right<br>Could only hear the plunging<br>Of the nations in the night.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When the ends of the earth came marching in<br>To torch and cresset gleam.<br>And the roads of the world that lead to Rome<br>Were filled with faces that moved like foam,<br>Like faces in a dream.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And men rode out of the eastern lands,<br>Broad river and burning plain;<br>Trees that are Titan flowers to see,<br>And tiger skies, striped horribly,<br>With tints of tropic rain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Where Ind's enamelled peaks arise<br>Around that inmost one,<br>Where ancient eagles on its brink,<br>Vast as archangels, gather and drink<br>The sacrament of the sun.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And men brake out of the northern lands,<br>Enormous lands alone,<br>Where a spell is laid upon life and lust<br>And the rain is changed to a silver dust<br>And the sea to a great green stone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And a Shape that moveth murkily<br>In mirrors of ice and night,<br>Hath blanched with fear all beasts and birds,<br>As death and a shock of evil words<br>Blast a man's hair with white.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the cry of the palms and the purple moons,<br>Or the cry of the frost and foam,<br>Swept ever around an inmost place,<br>And the din of distant race on race<br>Cried and replied round Rome.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And there was death on the Emperor<br>And night upon the Pope:<br>And Alfred, hiding in deep grass,<br>Hardened his heart with hope.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A sea-folk blinder than the sea<br>Broke all about his land,<br>But Alfred up against them bare<br>And gripped the ground and grasped the air,<br>Staggered, and strove to stand.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He bent them back with spear and spade,<br>With desperate dyke and wall,<br>With foemen leaning on his shield<br>And roaring on him when he reeled;<br>And no help came at all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He broke them with a broken sword<br>A little towards the sea,<br>And for one hour of panting peace,<br>Ringed with a roar that would not cease,<br>With golden crown and girded fleece<br>Made laws under a tree.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>The Northmen came about our land<br>A Christless chivalry:<br>Who knew not of the arch or pen,<br>Great, beautiful half-witted men<br>From the sunrise and the sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Misshapen ships stood on the deep<br>Full of strange gold and fire,<br>And hairy men, as huge as sin<br>With horned heads, came wading in<br>Through the long, low sea-mire.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Our towns were shaken of tall kings<br>With scarlet beards like blood:<br>The world turned empty where they trod,<br>They took the kindly cross of God<br>And cut it up for wood.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Their souls were drifting as the sea,<br>And all good towns and lands<br>They only saw with heavy eyes,<br>And broke with heavy hands,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Their gods were sadder than the sea,<br>Gods of a wandering will,<br>Who cried for blood like beasts at night,<br>Sadly, from hill to hill.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They seemed as trees walking the earth,<br>As witless and as tall,<br>Yet they took hold upon the heavens<br>And no help came at all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They bred like birds in English woods,<br>They rooted like the rose,<br>When Alfred came to Athelney<br>To hide him from their bows</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There was not English armour left,<br>Nor any English thing,<br>When Alfred came to Athelney<br>To be an English king.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For earthquake swallowing earthquake<br>Uprent the Wessex tree;<br>The whirlpool of the pagan sway<br>Had swirled his sires as sticks away<br>When a flood smites the sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the great kings of Wessex<br>Wearied and sank in gore,<br>And even their ghosts in that great stress<br>Grew greyer and greyer, less and less,<br>With the lords that died in Lyonesse<br>And the king that comes no more.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the God of the Golden Dragon<br>Was dumb upon his throne,<br>And the lord of the Golden Dragon<br>Ran in the woods alone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And if ever he climbed the crest of luck<br>And set the flag before,<br>Returning as a wheel returns,<br>Came ruin and the rain that burns,<br>And all began once more.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And naught was left King Alfred<br>But shameful tears of rage,<br>In the island in the river<br>In the end of all his age.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In the island in the river<br>He was broken to his knee:<br>And he read, writ with an iron pen,<br>That God had wearied of Wessex men<br>And given their country, field and fen,<br>To the devils of the sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And he saw in a little picture,<br>Tiny and far away,<br>His mother sitting in Egbert's hall,<br>And a book she showed him, very small,<br>Where a sapphire Mary sat in stall<br>With a golden Christ at play.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It was wrought in the monk's slow manner,<br>From silver and sanguine shell,<br>Where the scenes are little and terrible,<br>Keyholes of heaven and hell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In the river island of Athelney,<br>With the river running past,<br>In colours of such simple creed<br>All things sprang at him, sun and weed,<br>Till the grass grew to be grass indeed<br>And the tree was a tree at last.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Fearfully plain the flowers grew,<br>Like the child's book to read,<br>Or like a friend's face seen in a glass;<br>He looked; and there Our Lady was,<br>She stood and stroked the tall live grass<br>As a man strokes his steed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Her face was like an open word<br>When brave men speak and choose,<br>The very colours of her coat<br>Were better than good news.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She spoke not, nor turned not,<br>Nor any sign she cast,<br>Only she stood up straight and free,<br>Between the flowers in Athelney,<br>And the river running past.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">One dim ancestral jewel hung<br>On his ruined armour grey,<br>He rent and cast it at her feet:<br>Where, after centuries, with slow feet,<br>Men came from hall and school and street<br>And found it where it lay.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Mother of God," the wanderer said,<br>"I am but a common king,<br>Nor will I ask what saints may ask,<br>To see a secret thing.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The gates of heaven are fearful gates<br>Worse than the gates of hell;<br>Not I would break the splendours barred<br>Or seek to know the thing they guard,<br>Which is too good to tell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But for this earth most pitiful,<br>This little land I know,<br>If that which is for ever is,<br>Or if our hearts shall break with bliss,<br>Seeing the stranger go?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"When our last bow is broken, Queen,<br>And our last javelin cast,<br>Under some sad, green evening sky,<br>Holding a ruined cross on high,<br>Under warm westland grass to lie,<br>Shall we come home at last?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And a voice came human but high up,<br>Like a cottage climbed among<br>The clouds; or a serf of hut and croft<br>That sits by his hovel fire as oft,<br>But hears on his old bare roof aloft<br>A belfry burst in song.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,<br>We do not guard our gain,<br>The heaviest hind may easily<br>Come silently and suddenly<br>Upon me in a lane.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And any little maid that walks<br>In good thoughts apart,<br>May break the guard of the Three Kings<br>And see the dear and dreadful things<br>I hid within my heart.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The meanest man in grey fields gone<br>Behind the set of sun,<br>Heareth between star and other star,<br>Through the door of the darkness fallen ajar,<br>The council, eldest of things that are,<br>The talk of the Three in One.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,<br>We do not guard our gold,<br>Men may uproot where worlds begin,<br>Or read the name of the nameless sin;<br>But if he fail or if he win<br>To no good man is told.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The men of the East may spell the stars,<br>And times and triumphs mark,<br>But the men signed of the cross of Christ<br>Go gaily in the dark.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The men of the East may search the scrolls<br>For sure fates and fame,<br>But the men that drink the blood of God<br>Go singing to their shame.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The wise men know what wicked things<br>Are written on the sky,<br>They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,<br>Hearing the heavy purple wings,<br>Where the forgotten seraph kings<br>Still plot how God shall die.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The wise men know all evil things<br>Under the twisted trees,<br>Where the perverse in pleasure pine<br>And men are weary of green wine<br>And sick of crimson seas.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But you and all the kind of Christ<br>Are ignorant and brave,<br>And you have wars you hardly win<br>And souls you hardly save.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I tell you naught for your comfort,<br>Yea, naught for your desire,<br>Save that the sky grows darker yet<br>And the sea rises higher.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Night shall be thrice night over you,<br>And heaven an iron cope.<br>Do you have joy without a cause,<br>Yea, faith without a hope?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Even as she spoke she was not,<br>Nor any word said he,<br>He only heard, still as he stood<br>Under the old night's nodding hood,<br>The sea-folk breaking down the wood<br>Like a high tide from sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He only heard the heathen men,<br>Whose eyes are blue and bleak,<br>Singing about some cruel thing<br>Done by a great and smiling king<br>In daylight on a deck.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He only heard the heathen men,<br>Whose eyes are blue and blind,<br>Singing what shameful things are done<br>Between the sunlit sea and the sun<br>When the land is left behind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"></a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>BOOK II THE GATHERING OF THE CHIEFS</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Up across windy wastes and up<br>Went Alfred over the shaws,<br>Shaken of the joy of giants,<br>The joy without a cause.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In the slopes away to the western bays,<br>Where blows not ever a tree,<br>He washed his soul in the west wind<br>And his body in the sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And he set to rhyme his ale-measures,<br>And he sang aloud his laws,<br>Because of the joy of the giants,<br>The joy without a cause. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The King went gathering Wessex men,<br>As grain out of the chaff<br>The few that were alive to die,<br>Laughing, as littered skulls that lie<br>After lost battles turn to the sky<br>An everlasting laugh.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The King went gathering Christian men,<br>As wheat out of the husk;<br>Eldred, the Franklin by the sea,<br>And Mark, the man from Italy,<br>And Colan of the Sacred Tree,<br>From the old tribe on Usk.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The rook croaked homeward heavily,<br>The west was clear and warm,<br>The smoke of evening food and ease<br>Rose like a blue tree in the trees<br>When he came to Eldred's farm.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But Eldred's farm was fallen awry,<br>Like an old cripple's bones,<br>And Eldred's tools were red with rust,<br>And on his well was a green crust,<br>And purple thistles upward thrust,<br>Between the kitchen stones.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But smoke of some good feasting<br>Went upwards evermore,<br>And Eldred's doors stood wide apart<br>For loitering foot or labouring cart,<br>And Eldred's great and foolish heart<br>Stood open like his door.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A mighty man was Eldred,<br>A bulk for casks to fill,<br>His face a dreaming furnace,<br>His body a walking hill.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In the old wars of Wessex<br>His sword had sunken deep,<br>But all his friends, he signed and said,<br>Were broken about Ethelred;<br>And between the deep drink and the dead<br>He had fallen upon sleep.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Come not to me, King Alfred, Save always for the ale:<br>Why should my harmless hinds be slain<br>Because the chiefs cry once again,<br>As in all fights, that we shall gain,<br>And in all fights we fail?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Your scalds still thunder and prophesy<br>That crown that never comes;<br>Friend, I will watch the certain things,<br>Swine, and slow moons like silver rings,<br>And the ripening of the plums."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And Alfred answered, drinking,<br>And gravely, without blame,<br>"Nor bear I boast of scald or king,<br>The thing I bear is a lesser thing,<br>But comes in a better name.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Out of the mouth of the Mother of God,<br>More than the doors of doom,<br>I call the muster of Wessex men<br>From grassy hamlet or ditch or den,<br>To break and be broken, God knows when,<br>But I have seen for whom.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Out of the mouth of the Mother of God<br>Like a little word come I;<br>For I go gathering Christian men<br>From sunken paving and ford and fen,<br>To die in a battle, God knows when,<br>By God, but I know why.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And this is the word of Mary,<br>The word of the world's desire<br>`No more of comfort shall ye get,<br>Save that the sky grows darker yet<br>And the sea rises higher.' "</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then silence sank. And slowly<br>Arose the sea-land lord,<br>Like some vast beast for mystery,<br>He filled the room and porch and sky,<br>And from a cobwebbed nail on high<br>Unhooked his heavy sword.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Up on the shrill sea-downs and up<br>Went Alfred all alone,<br>Turning but once e'er the door was shut,<br>Shouting to Eldred over his butt,<br>That he bring all spears to the woodman's hut<br>Hewn under Egbert's Stone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And he turned his back and broke the fern,<br>And fought the moths of dusk,<br>And went on his way for other friends<br>Friends fallen of all the wide world's ends,<br>From Rome that wrath and pardon sends<br>And the grey tribes on Usk.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He saw gigantic tracks of death<br>And many a shape of doom,<br>Good steadings to grey ashes gone<br>And a monk's house white like a skeleton<br>In the green crypt of the combe.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And in many a Roman villa<br>Earth and her ivies eat,<br>Saw coloured pavements sink and fade<br>In flowers, and the windy colonnade<br>Like the spectre of a street.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But the cold stars clustered<br>Among the cold pines<br>Ere he was half on his pilgrimage<br>Over the western lines.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the white dawn widened<br>Ere he came to the last pine,<br>Where Mark, the man from Italy,<br>Still made the Christian sign.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The long farm lay on the large hill-side,<br>Flat like a painted plan,<br>And by the side the low white house,<br>Where dwelt the southland man.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A bronzed man, with a bird's bright eye,<br>And a strong bird's beak and brow,<br>His skin was brown like buried gold,<br>And of certain of his sires was told<br>That they came in the shining ship of old,<br>With Caesar in the prow.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">His fruit trees stood like soldiers<br>Drilled in a straight line,<br>His strange, stiff olives did not fail,<br>And all the kings of the earth drank ale,<br>But he drank wine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Wide over wasted British plains<br>Stood never an arch or dome,<br>Only the trees to toss and reel,<br>The tribes to bicker, the beasts to squeal;<br>But the eyes in his head were strong like steel,<br>And his soul remembered Rome.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then Alfred of the lonely spear<br>Lifted his lion head;<br>And fronted with the Italian's eye,<br>Asking him of his whence and why,<br>King Alfred stood and said:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I am that oft-defeated King<br>Whose failure fills the land,<br>Who fled before the Danes of old,<br>Who chaffered with the Danes with gold,<br>Who now upon the Wessex wold<br>Hardly has feet to stand.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But out of the mouth of the Mother of God<br>I have seen the truth like fire,<br>This--that the sky grows darker yet<br>And the sea rises higher."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Long looked the Roman on the land;<br>The trees as golden crowns<br>Blazed, drenched with dawn and dew-empearled<br>While faintlier coloured, freshlier curled,<br>The clouds from underneath the world<br>Stood up over the downs.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"These vines be ropes that drag me hard,"<br>He said. "I go not far;<br>Where would you meet? For you must hold<br>Half Wiltshire and the White Horse wold,<br>And the Thames bank to Owsenfold,<br>If Wessex goes to war.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Guthrum sits strong on either bank<br>And you must press his lines<br>Inwards, and eastward drive him down;<br>I doubt if you shall take the crown<br>Till you have taken London town.<br>For me, I have the vines."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"If each man on the Judgment Day<br>Meet God on a plain alone,"<br>Said Alfred, "I will speak for you<br>As for myself, and call it true<br>That you brought all fighting folk you knew<br>Lined under Egbert's Stone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Though I be in the dust ere then,<br>I know where you will be."<br>And shouldering suddenly his spear<br>He faded like some elfin fear,<br>Where the tall pines ran up, tier on tier<br>Tree overtoppling tree.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He shouldered his spear at morning<br>And laughed to lay it on,<br>But he leaned on his spear as on a staff,<br>With might and little mood to laugh,<br>Or ever he sighted chick or calf<br>Of Colan of Caerleon.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For the man dwelt in a lost land<br>Of boulders and broken men,<br>In a great grey cave far off to the south<br>Where a thick green forest stopped the mouth,<br>Giving darkness in his den.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the man was come like a shadow,<br>From the shadow of Druid trees,<br>Where Usk, with mighty murmurings,<br>Past Caerleon of the fallen kings,<br>Goes out to ghostly seas.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Last of a race in ruin--<br>He spoke the speech of the Gaels;<br>His kin were in holy Ireland,<br>Or up in the crags of Wales.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But his soul stood with his mother's folk,<br>That were of the rain-wrapped isle,<br>Where Patrick and Brandan westerly<br>Looked out at last on a landless sea<br>And the sun's last smile.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">His harp was carved and cunning,<br>As the Celtic craftsman makes,<br>Graven all over with twisting shapes<br>Like many headless snakes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">His harp was carved and cunning,<br>His sword prompt and sharp,<br>And he was gay when he held the sword,<br>Sad when he held the harp.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For the great Gaels of Ireland<br>Are the men that God made mad,<br>For all their wars are merry,<br>And all their songs are sad.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He kept the Roman order,<br>He made the Christian sign;<br>But his eyes grew often blind and bright,<br>And the sea that rose in the rocks at night<br>Rose to his head like wine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He made the sign of the cross of God,<br>He knew the Roman prayer,<br>But he had unreason in his heart<br>Because of the gods that were.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Even they that walked on the high cliffs,<br>High as the clouds were then,<br>Gods of unbearable beauty,<br>That broke the hearts of men.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And whether in seat or saddle,<br>Whether with frown or smile,<br>Whether at feast or fight was he,<br>He heard the noise of a nameless sea<br>On an undiscovered isle.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Lifting the great green ivy<br>And the great spear lowering,<br>One said, "I am Alfred of Wessex,<br>And I am a conquered king."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the man of the cave made answer,<br>And his eyes were stars of scorn,<br>"And better kings were conquered<br>Or ever your sires were born.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"What goddess was your mother,<br>What fay your breed begot,<br>That you should not die with Uther<br>And Arthur and Lancelot?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But when you win you brag and blow,<br>And when you lose you rail,<br>Army of eastland yokels<br>Not strong enough to fail."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I bring not boast or railing,"<br>Spake Alfred not in ire,<br>"I bring of Our Lady a lesson set,<br>This--that the sky grows darker yet<br>And the sea rises higher."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then Colan of the Sacred Tree<br>Tossed his black mane on high,<br>And cried, as rigidly he rose,<br>"And if the sea and sky be foes,<br>We will tame the sea and sky."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Smiled Alfred, "Seek ye a fable<br>More dizzy and more dread<br>Than all your mad barbarian tales<br>Where the sky stands on its head ?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"A tale where a man looks down on the sky<br>That has long looked down on him;<br>A tale where a man can swallow a sea<br>That might swallow the seraphim.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Bring to the hut by Egbert's Stone<br>All bills and bows ye have."<br>And Alfred strode off rapidly,<br>And Colan of the Sacred Tree<br>Went slowly to his cave.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"></a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>BOOK III THE HARP OF ALFRED</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>In a tree that yawned and twisted<br>The King's few goods were flung,<br>A mass-book mildewed, line by line,<br>And weapons and a skin of wine,<br>And an old harp unstrung.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">By the yawning tree in the twilight<br>The King unbound his sword,<br>Severed the harp of all his goods,<br>And there in the cool and soundless woods<br>Sounded a single chord.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then laughed; and watched the finches flash,<br>The sullen flies in swarm,<br>And went unarmed over the hills,<br>With the harp upon his arm,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Until he came to the White Horse Vale<br>And saw across the plains,<br>In the twilight high and far and fell,<br>Like the fiery terraces of hell,<br>The camp fires of the Danes--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The fires of the Great Army<br>That was made of iron men,<br>Whose lights of sacrilege and scorn<br>Ran around England red as morn,<br>Fires over Glastonbury Thorn--<br>Fires out on Ely Fen.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And as he went by White Horse Vale<br>He saw lie wan and wide<br>The old horse graven, God knows when,<br>By gods or beasts or what things then<br>Walked a new world instead of men<br>And scrawled on the hill-side.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And when he came to White Horse Down<br>The great White Horse was grey,<br>For it was ill scoured of the weed,<br>And lichen and thorn could crawl and feed,<br>Since the foes of settled house and creed<br>Had swept old works away.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">King Alfred gazed all sorrowful<br>At thistle and mosses grey,<br>Then laughed; and watched the finches flash,<br>Till a rally of Danes with shield and bill<br>Rolled drunk over the dome of the hill,<br>And, hearing of his harp and skill,<br>They dragged him to their play.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And as they went through the high green grass<br>They roared like the great green sea;<br>But when they came to the red camp fire<br>They were silent suddenly.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And as they went up the wastes away<br>They went reeling to and fro;<br>But when they came to the red camp fire<br>They stood all in a row.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For golden in the firelight,<br>With a smile carved on his lips,<br>And a beard curled right cunningly,<br>Was Guthrum of the Northern Sea,<br>The emperor of the ships--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">With three great earls King Guthrum<br>Went the rounds from fire to fire,<br>With Harold, nephew of the King,<br>And Ogier of the Stone and Sling,<br>And Elf, whose gold lute had a string<br>That sighed like all desire.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The Earls of the Great Army<br>That no men born could tire,<br>Whose flames anear him or aloof<br>Took hold of towers or walls of proof,<br>Fire over Glastonbury roof<br>And out on Ely, fire.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And Guthrum heard the soldiers' tale<br>And bade the stranger play;<br>Not harshly, but as one on high,<br>On a marble pillar in the sky,<br>Who sees all folk that live and die--<br>Pigmy and far away.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And Alfred, King of Wessex,<br>Looked on his conqueror--<br>And his hands hardened; but he played,<br>And leaving all later hates unsaid,<br>He sang of some old British raid<br>On the wild west march of yore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He sang of war in the warm wet shires,<br>Where rain nor fruitage fails,<br>Where England of the motley states<br>Deepens like a garden to the gates<br>In the purple walls of Wales.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He sang of the seas of savage heads<br>And the seas and seas of spears,<br>Boiling all over Offa's Dyke,<br>What time a Wessex club could strike<br>The kings of the mountaineers.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Till Harold laughed and snatched the harp,<br>The kinsman of the King,<br>A big youth, beardless like a child,<br>Whom the new wine of war sent wild,<br>Smote, and began to sing--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And he cried of the ships as eagles<br>That circle fiercely and fly,<br>And sweep the seas and strike the towns<br>From Cyprus round to Skye.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">How swiftly and with peril<br>They gather all good things,<br>The high horns of the forest beasts,<br>Or the secret stones of kings.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"For Rome was given to rule the world,<br>And gat of it little joy--<br>But we, but we shall enjoy the world,<br>The whole huge world a toy.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Great wine like blood from Burgundy,<br>Cloaks like the clouds from Tyre,<br>And marble like solid moonlight,<br>And gold like frozen fire.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Smells that a man might swill in a cup,<br>Stones that a man might eat,<br>And the great smooth women like ivory<br>That the Turks sell in the street."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He sang the song of the thief of the world,<br>And the gods that love the thief;<br>And he yelled aloud at the cloister-yards,<br>Where men go gathering grief.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Well have you sung, O stranger,<br>Of death on the dyke in Wales,<br>Your chief was a bracelet-giver;<br>But the red unbroken river<br>Of a race runs not for ever,<br>But suddenly it fails.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Doubtless your sires were sword-swingers<br>When they waded fresh from foam,<br>Before they were turned to women<br>By the god of the nails from Rome;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But since you bent to the shaven men,<br>Who neither lust nor smite,<br>Thunder of Thor, we hunt you<br>A hare on the mountain height."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">King Guthrum smiled a little,<br>And said, "It is enough,<br>Nephew, let Elf retune the string;<br>A boy must needs like bellowing,<br>But the old ears of a careful king<br>Are glad of songs less rough."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Blue-eyed was Elf the minstrel,<br>With womanish hair and ring,<br>Yet heavy was his hand on sword,<br>Though light upon the string.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And as he stirred the strings of the harp<br>To notes but four or five,<br>The heart of each man moved in him<br>Like a babe buried alive.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And they felt the land of the folk-songs<br>Spread southward of the Dane,<br>And they heard the good Rhine flowing<br>In the heart of all Allemagne.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They felt the land of the folk-songs,<br>Where the gifts hang on the tree,<br>Where the girls give ale at morning<br>And the tears come easily.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The mighty people, womanlike,<br>That have pleasure in their pain<br>As he sang of Balder beautiful,<br>Whom the heavens loved in vain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">As he sang of Balder beautiful,<br>Whom the heavens could not save,<br>Till the world was like a sea of tears<br>And every soul a wave. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"There is always a thing forgotten<br>When all the world goes well;<br>A thing forgotten, as long ago,<br>When the gods forgot the mistletoe,<br>And soundless as an arrow of snow<br>The arrow of anguish fell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The thing on the blind side of the heart,<br>On the wrong side of the door,<br>The green plant groweth, menacing<br>Almighty lovers in the spring;<br>There is always a forgotten thing,<br>And love is not secure."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And all that sat by the fire were sad,<br>Save Ogier, who was stern,<br>And his eyes hardened, even to stones,<br>As he took the harp in turn;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Earl Ogier of the Stone and Sling<br>Was odd to ear and sight,<br>Old he was, but his locks were red,<br>And jests were all the words he said<br>Yet he was sad at board and bed<br>And savage in the fight.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"You sing of the young gods easily<br>In the days when you are young;<br>But I go smelling yew and sods,<br>And I know there are gods behind the gods,<br>Gods that are best unsung.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And a man grows ugly for women,<br>And a man grows dull with ale,<br>Well if he find in his soul at last<br>Fury, that does not fail.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The wrath of the gods behind the gods<br>Who would rend all gods and men,<br>Well if the old man's heart hath still<br>Wheels sped of rage and roaring will,<br>Like cataracts to break down and kill,<br>Well for the old man then--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"While there is one tall shrine to shake,<br>Or one live man to rend;<br>For the wrath of the gods behind the gods<br>Who are weary to make an end.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"There lives one moment for a man<br>When the door at his shoulder shakes,<br>When the taut rope parts under the pull,<br>And the barest branch is beautiful<br>One moment, while it breaks.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"So rides my soul upon the sea<br>That drinks the howling ships,<br>Though in black jest it bows and nods<br>Under the moons with silver rods,<br>I know it is roaring at the gods,<br>Waiting the last eclipse.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And in the last eclipse the sea<br>Shall stand up like a tower,<br>Above all moons made dark and riven,<br>Hold up its foaming head in heaven,<br>And laugh, knowing its hour.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And the high ones in the happy town<br>Propped of the planets seven,<br>Shall know a new light in the mind,<br>A noise about them and behind,<br>Shall hear an awful voice, and find<br>Foam in the courts of heaven.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And you that sit by the fire are young,<br>And true love waits for you;<br>But the king and I grow old, grow old,<br>And hate alone is true."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And Guthrum shook his head but smiled,<br>For he was a mighty clerk,<br>And had read lines in the Latin books<br>When all the north was dark.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He said, "I am older than you, Ogier;<br>Not all things would I rend,<br>For whether life be bad or good<br>It is best to abide the end."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He took the great harp wearily,<br>Even Guthrum of the Danes,<br>With wide eyes bright as the one long day<br>On the long polar plains.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For he sang of a wheel returning,<br>And the mire trod back to mire,<br>And how red hells and golden heavens<br>Are castles in the fire.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"It is good to sit where the good tales go,<br>To sit as our fathers sat;<br>But the hour shall come after his youth,<br>When a man shall know not tales but truth,<br>And his heart fail thereat.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"When he shall read what is written<br>So plain in clouds and clods,<br>When he shall hunger without hope<br>Even for evil gods.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"For this is a heavy matter,<br>And the truth is cold to tell;<br>Do we not know, have we not heard,<br>The soul is like a lost bird,<br>The body a broken shell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And a man hopes, being ignorant,<br>Till in white woods apart<br>He finds at last the lost bird dead:<br>And a man may still lift up his head<br>But never more his heart.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"There comes no noise but weeping<br>Out of the ancient sky,<br>And a tear is in the tiniest flower<br>Because the gods must die.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The little brooks are very sweet,<br>Like a girl's ribbons curled,<br>But the great sea is bitter<br>That washes all the world.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Strong are the Roman roses,<br>Or the free flowers of the heath,<br>But every flower, like a flower of the sea,<br>Smelleth with the salt of death.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And the heart of the locked battle<br>Is the happiest place for men;<br>When shrieking souls as shafts go by<br>And many have died and all may die;<br>Though this word be a mystery,<br>Death is most distant then.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Death blazes bright above the cup,<br>And clear above the crown;<br>But in that dream of battle<br>We seem to tread it down.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Wherefore I am a great king,<br>And waste the world in vain,<br>Because man hath not other power,<br>Save that in dealing death for dower,<br>He may forget it for an hour<br>To remember it again."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And slowly his hands and thoughtfully<br>Fell from the lifted lyre,<br>And the owls moaned from the mighty trees<br>Till Alfred caught it to his knees<br>And smote it as in ire.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He heaved the head of the harp on high<br>And swept the framework barred,<br>And his stroke had all the rattle and spark<br>Of horses flying hard.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"When God put man in a garden<br>He girt him with a sword,<br>And sent him forth a free knight<br>That might betray his lord;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"He brake Him and betrayed Him,<br>And fast and far he fell,<br>Till you and I may stretch our necks<br>And burn our beards in hell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But though I lie on the floor of the world,<br>With the seven sins for rods,<br>I would rather fall with Adam<br>Than rise with all your gods.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"What have the strong gods given?<br>Where have the glad gods led?<br>When Guthrum sits on a hero's throne<br>And asks if he is dead?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Sirs, I am but a nameless man,<br>A rhymester without home,<br>Yet since I come of the Wessex clay<br>And carry the cross of Rome,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I will even answer the mighty earl<br>That asked of Wessex men<br>Why they be meek and monkish folk,<br>And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke;<br>What sign have we save blood and smoke?<br>Here is my answer then.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"That on you is fallen the shadow,<br>And not upon the Name;<br>That though we scatter and though we fly,<br>And you hang over us like the sky,<br>You are more tired of victory,<br>Than we are tired of shame.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"That though you hunt the Christian man<br>Like a hare on the hill-side,<br>The hare has still more heart to run<br>Than you have heart to ride.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"That though all lances split on you,<br>All swords be heaved in vain,<br>We have more lust again to lose<br>Than you to win again.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Your lord sits high in the saddle,<br>A broken-hearted king,<br>But our king Alfred, lost from fame,<br>Fallen among foes or bonds of shame,<br>In I know not what mean trade or name,<br>Has still some song to sing;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Our monks go robed in rain and snow,<br>But the heart of flame therein,<br>But you go clothed in feasts and flames,<br>When all is ice within;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb<br>Men wondering ceaselessly,<br>If it be not better to fast for joy<br>Than feast for misery.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Nor monkish order only<br>Slides down, as field to fen,<br>All things achieved and chosen pass,<br>As the White Horse fades in the grass,<br>No work of Christian men.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Ere the sad gods that made your gods<br>Saw their sad sunrise pass,<br>The White Horse of the White Horse Vale,<br>That you have left to darken and fail,<br>Was cut out of the grass.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Therefore your end is on you,<br>Is on you and your kings,<br>Not for a fire in Ely fen,<br>Not that your gods are nine or ten,<br>But because it is only Christian men<br>Guard even heathen things.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"For our God hath blessed creation,<br>Calling it good. I know<br>What spirit with whom you blindly band<br>Hath blessed destruction with his hand;<br>Yet by God's death the stars shall stand<br>And the small apples grow."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the King, with harp on shoulder,<br>Stood up and ceased his song;<br>And the owls moaned from the mighty trees,<br>And the Danes laughed loud and long.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"></a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>BOOK IV THE WOMAN IN THE FOREST</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Thick thunder of the snorting swine,<br>Enormous in the gloam,<br>Rending among all roots that cling,<br>And the wild horses whinnying,<br>Were the night's noises when the King<br>Shouldering his harp, went home.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">With eyes of owl and feet of fox,<br>Full of all thoughts he went;<br>He marked the tilt of the pagan camp,<br>The paling of pine, the sentries' tramp,<br>And the one great stolen altar-lamp<br>Over Guthrum in his tent.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">By scrub and thorn in Ethandune <br>That night the foe had lain;<br>Whence ran across the heather grey<br>The old stones of a Roman way; <br>And in a wood not far away<br>The pale road split in twain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He marked the wood and the cloven ways<br>With an old captain's eyes,<br>And he thought how many a time had he<br>Sought to see Doom he could not see;<br>How ruin had come and victory,<br>And both were a surprise.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Even so he had watched and wondered<br>Under Ashdown from the plains;<br>With Ethelred praying in his tent,<br>Till the white hawthorn swung and bent,<br>As Alfred rushed his spears and rent<br>The shield-wall of the Danes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Even so he had watched and wondered,<br>Knowing neither less nor more,<br>Till all his lords lay dying,<br>And axes on axes plying,<br>Flung him, and drove him flying<br>Like a pirate to the shore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Wise he had been before defeat,<br>And wise before success;<br>Wise in both hours and ignorant,<br>Knowing neither more nor less.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">As he went down to the river-hut<br>He knew a night-shade scent,<br>Owls did as evil cherubs rise,<br>With little wings and lantern eyes,<br>As though he sank through the under-skies;<br>But down and down he went.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">As he went down to the river-hut<br>He went as one that fell;<br>Seeing the high forest domes and spars.<br>Dim green or torn with golden scars,<br>As the proud look up at the evil stars,<br>In the red heavens of hell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For he must meet by the river-hut<br>Them he had bidden to arm,<br>Mark from the towers of Italy,<br>And Colan of the Sacred Tree,<br>And Eldred who beside the sea<br>Held heavily his farm.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The roof leaned gaping to the grass,<br>As a monstrous mushroom lies;<br>Echoing and empty seemed the place;<br>But opened in a little space<br>A great grey woman with scarred face<br>And strong and humbled eyes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">King Alfred was but a meagre man,<br>Bright eyed, but lean and pale:<br>And swordless, with his harp and rags,<br>He seemed a beggar, such as lags<br>Looking for crusts and ale.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the woman, with a woman's eyes<br>Of pity at once and ire,<br>Said, when that she had glared a span,<br>"There is a cake for any man<br>If he will watch the fire."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And Alfred, bowing heavily,<br>Sat down the fire to stir,<br>And even as the woman pitied him<br>So did he pity her.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Saying, "O great heart in the night,<br>O best cast forth for worst,<br>Twilight shall melt and morning stir,<br>And no kind thing shall come to her,<br>Till God shall turn the world over<br>And all the last are first.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And well may God with the serving-folk<br>Cast in His dreadful lot;<br>Is not He too a servant,<br>And is not He forgot ?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"For was not God my gardener<br>And silent like a slave;<br>That opened oaks on the uplands<br>Or thicket in graveyard gave?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And was not God my armourer,<br>All patient and unpaid,<br>That sealed my skull as a helmet,<br>And ribs for hauberk made?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Did not a great grey servant<br>Of all my sires and me,<br>Build this pavilion of the pines,<br>And herd the fowls and fill the vines,<br>And labour and pass and leave no signs<br>Save mercy and mystery?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"For God is a great servant,<br>And rose before the day,<br>From some primordial slumber torn;<br>But all we living later born<br>Sleep on, and rise after the morn,<br>And the Lord has gone away.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"On things half sprung from sleeping,<br>All sleepy suns have shone,<br>They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees,<br>The beasts blink upon hands and knees,<br>Man is awake and does and sees--<br>But Heaven has done and gone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For who shall guess the good riddle<br>Or speak of the Holiest,<br>Save in faint figures and failing words,<br>Who loves, yet laughs among the swords,<br>Labours, and is at rest?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But some see God like Guthrum,<br>Crowned, with a great beard curled,<br>But I see God like a good giant,<br>That, labouring, lifts the world.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Wherefore was God in Golgotha,<br>Slain as a serf is slain;<br>And hate He had of prince and peer,<br>And love He had and made good cheer,<br>Of them that, like this woman here,<br>Go powerfully in pain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But in this grey morn of man's life,<br>Cometh sometime to the mind<br>A little light that leaps and flies,<br>Like a star blown on the wind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"A star of nowhere, a nameless star,<br>A light that spins and swirls,<br>And cries that even in hedge and hill,<br>Even on earth, it may go ill<br>At last with the evil earls.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"A dancing sparkle, a doubtful star,<br>On the waste wind whirled and driven;<br>But it seems to sing of a wilder worth,<br>A time discrowned of doom and birth,<br>And the kingdom of the poor on earth<br>Come, as it is in heaven.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But even though such days endure,<br>How shall it profit her?<br>Who shall go groaning to the grave,<br>With many a meek and mighty slave,<br>Field-breaker and fisher on the wave,<br>And woodman and waggoner.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Bake ye the big world all again<br>A cake with kinder leaven;<br>Yet these are sorry evermore--<br>Unless there be a little door,<br>A little door in heaven."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And as he wept for the woman<br>He let her business be,<br>And like his royal oath and rash<br>The good food fell upon the ash<br>And blackened instantly.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Screaming, the woman caught a cake<br>Yet burning from the bar,<br>And struck him suddenly on the face,<br>Leaving a scarlet scar.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">King Alfred stood up wordless,<br>A man dead with surprise,<br>And torture stood and the evil things<br>That are in the childish hearts of kings<br>An instant in his eyes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And even as he stood and stared<br>Drew round him in the dusk<br>Those friends creeping from far-off farms,<br>Marcus with all his slaves in arms,<br>And the strange spears hung with ancient charms<br>Of Colan of the Usk.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">With one whole farm marching afoot<br>The trampled road resounds,<br>Farm-hands and farm-beasts blundering by<br>And jars of mead and stores of rye,<br>Where Eldred strode above his high<br>And thunder-throated hounds.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And grey cattle and silver lowed<br>Against the unlifted morn,<br>And straw clung to the spear-shafts tall.<br>And a boy went before them all<br>Blowing a ram's horn.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">As mocking such rude revelry,<br>The dim clan of the Gael<br>Came like a bad king's burial-end,<br>With dismal robes that drop and rend<br>And demon pipes that wail--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In long, outlandish garments,<br>Torn, though of antique worth,<br>With Druid beards and Druid spears,<br>As a resurrected race appears<br>Out of an elder earth.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And though the King had called them forth<br>And knew them for his own,<br>So still each eye stood like a gem,<br>So spectral hung each broidered hem,<br>Grey carven men he fancied them,<br>Hewn in an age of stone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the two wild peoples of the north<br>Stood fronting in the gloam,<br>And heard and knew each in its mind<br>The third great thunder on the wind,<br>The living walls that hedge mankind,<br>The walking walls of Rome.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Mark's were the mixed tribes of the west,<br>Of many a hue and strain,<br>Gurth, with rank hair like yellow grass,<br>And the Cornish fisher, Gorlias,<br>And Halmer, come from his first mass,<br>Lately baptized, a Dane.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But like one man in armour<br>Those hundreds trod the field,<br>From red Arabia to the Tyne<br>The earth had heard that marching-line,<br>Since the cry on the hill Capitoline,<br>And the fall of the golden shield.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the earth shook and the King stood still<br>Under the greenwood bough,<br>And the smoking cake lay at his feet<br>And the blow was on his brow.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then Alfred laughed out suddenly,<br>Like thunder in the spring,<br>Till shook aloud the lintel-beams,<br>And the squirrels stirred in dusty dreams,<br>And the startled birds went up in streams,<br>For the laughter of the King.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the beasts of the earth and the birds looked down,<br>In a wild solemnity,<br>On a stranger sight than a sylph or elf,<br>On one man laughing at himself<br>Under the greenwood tree--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The giant laughter of Christian men<br>That roars through a thousand tales,<br>Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass,<br>And Jack's away with his master's lass,<br>And the miser is banged with all his brass,<br>The farmer with all his flails;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Tales that tumble and tales that trick,<br>Yet end not all in scorning--<br>Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,<br>And the clock gone wrong and the world gone right,<br>That the mummers sing upon Christmas night<br>And Christmas Day in the morning.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Now here is a good warrant,"<br>Cried Alfred, "by my sword;<br>For he that is struck for an ill servant<br>Should be a kind lord.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"He that has been a servant<br>Knows more than priests and kings,<br>But he that has been an ill servant,<br>He knows all earthly things.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Pride flings frail palaces at the sky,<br>As a man flings up sand,<br>But the firm feet of humility<br>Take hold of heavy land.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Pride juggles with her toppling towers,<br>They strike the sun and cease,<br>But the firm feet of humility<br>They grip the ground like trees.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"He that hath failed in a little thing<br>Hath a sign upon the brow;<br>And the Earls of the Great Army<br>Have no such seal to show.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The red print on my forehead,<br>Small flame for a red star,<br>In the van of the violent marching, then<br>When the sky is torn of the trumpets ten,<br>And the hands of the happy howling men<br>Fling wide the gates of war.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"This blow that I return not<br>Ten times will I return<br>On kings and earls of all degree,<br>And armies wide as empires be<br>Shall slide like landslips to the sea<br>If the red star burn.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"One man shall drive a hundred,<br>As the dead kings drave;<br>Before me rocking hosts be riven,<br>And battering cohorts backwards driven,<br>For I am the first king known of Heaven<br>That has been struck like a slave.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Up on the old white road, brothers,<br>Up on the Roman walls!<br>For this is the night of the drawing of swords,<br>And the tainted tower of the heathen hordes<br>Leans to our hammers, fires and cords,<br>Leans a little and falls.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Follow the star that lives and leaps,<br>Follow the sword that sings,<br>For we go gathering heathen men,<br>A terrible harvest, ten by ten,<br>As the wrath of the last red autumn--then<br>When Christ reaps down the kings.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Follow a light that leaps and spins,<br>Follow the fire unfurled!<br>For riseth up against realm and rod,<br>A thing forgotten, a thing downtrod,<br>The last lost giant, even God,<br>Is risen against the world."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Roaring they went o'er the Roman wall,<br>And roaring up the lane,<br>Their torches tossed a ladder of fire,<br>Higher their hymn was heard and higher,<br>More sweet for hate and for heart's desire,<br>And up in the northern scrub and brier,<br>They fell upon the Dane.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"></a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>BOOK V ETHANDUNE: THE FIRST STROKE</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>King Guthrum was a dread king,<br>Like death out of the north;<br>Shrines without name or number<br>He rent and rolled as lumber,<br>From Chester to the Humber<br>He drove his foemen forth.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The Roman villas heard him<br>In the valley of the Thames,<br>Come over the hills roaring<br>Above their roofs, and pouring<br>On spire and stair and flooring<br>Brimstone and pitch and flames.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sheer o'er the great chalk uplands<br>And the hill of the Horse went he,<br>Till high on Hampshire beacons<br>He saw the southern sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">High on the heights of Wessex<br>He saw the southern brine,<br>And turned him to a conquered land,<br>And where the northern thornwoods stand,<br>And the road parts on either hand,<br>There came to him a sign.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">King Guthrum was a war-chief,<br>A wise man in the field,<br>And though he prospered well, and knew<br>How Alfred's folk were sad and few,<br>Not less with weighty care he drew<br>Long lines for pike and shield.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">King Guthrum lay on the upper land,<br>On a single road at gaze,<br>And his foe must come with lean array,<br>Up the left arm of the cloven way,<br>To the meeting of the ways.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And long ere the noise of armour,<br>An hour ere the break of light,<br>The woods awoke with crash and cry,<br>And the birds sprang clamouring harsh and high,<br>And the rabbits ran like an elves' army<br>Ere Alfred came in sight.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The live wood came at Guthrum,<br>On foot and claw and wing,<br>The nests were noisy overhead,<br>For Alfred and the star of red,<br>All life went forth, and the forest fled<br>Before the face of the King.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But halted in the woodways<br>Christ's few were grim and grey,<br>And each with a small, far, bird-like sight<br>Saw the high folly of the fight;<br>And though strange joys had grown in the night,<br>Despair grew with the day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And when white dawn crawled through the wood,<br>Like cold foam of a flood,<br>Then weakened every warrior's mood,<br>In hope, though not in hardihood;<br>And each man sorrowed as he stood<br>In the fashion of his blood.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For the Saxon Franklin sorrowed<br>For the things that had been fair;<br>For the dear dead woman, crimson-clad,<br>And the great feasts and the friends he had;<br>But the Celtic prince's soul was sad<br>For the things that never were.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In the eyes Italian all things<br>But a black laughter died;<br>And Alfred flung his shield to earth<br>And smote his breast and cried--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I wronged a man to his slaying,<br>And a woman to her shame,<br>And once I looked on a sworn maid<br>That was wed to the Holy Name.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And once I took my neighbour's wife,<br>That was bound to an eastland man,<br>In the starkness of my evil youth,<br>Before my griefs began.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"People, if you have any prayers,<br>Say prayers for me:<br>And lay me under a Christian stone<br>In that lost land I thought my own,<br>To wait till the holy horn is blown,<br>And all poor men are free."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then Eldred of the idle farm<br>Leaned on his ancient sword,<br>As fell his heavy words and few;<br>And his eyes were of such alien blue<br>As gleams where the Northman saileth new<br>Into an unknown fiord.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I was a fool and wasted ale--<br>My slaves found it sweet;<br>I was a fool and wasted bread,<br>And the birds had bread to eat.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The kings go up and the kings go down,<br>And who knows who shall rule;<br>Next night a king may starve or sleep,<br>But men and birds and beasts shall weep<br>At the burial of a fool.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"O, drunkards in my cellar,<br>Boys in my apple tree,<br>The world grows stern and strange and new,<br>And wise men shall govern you,<br>And you shall weep for me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But yoke me my own oxen,<br>Down to my own farm;<br>My own dog will whine for me,<br>My own friends will bend the knee,<br>And the foes I slew openly<br>Have never wished me harm."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And all were moved a little,<br>But Colan stood apart,<br>Having first pity, and after<br>Hearing, like rat in rafter,<br>That little worm of laughter<br>That eats the Irish heart.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And his grey-green eyes were cruel,<br>And the smile of his mouth waxed hard,<br>And he said, "And when did Britain<br>Become your burying-yard?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Before the Romans lit the land,<br>When schools and monks were none,<br>We reared such stones to the sun-god<br>As might put out the sun.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The tall trees of Britain<br>We worshipped and were wise,<br>But you shall raid the whole land through<br>And never a tree shall talk to you,<br>Though every leaf is a tongue taught true<br>And the forest is full of eyes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"On one round hill to the seaward<br>The trees grow tall and grey<br>And the trees talk together<br>When all men are away.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"O'er a few round hills forgotten<br>The trees grow tall in rings,<br>And the trees talk together<br>Of many pagan things.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Yet I could lie and listen<br>With a cross upon my clay,<br>And hear unhurt for ever<br>What the trees of Britain say."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A proud man was the Roman,<br>His speech a single one,<br>But his eyes were like an eagle's eyes<br>That is staring at the sun.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Dig for me where I die," he said,<br>"If first or last I fall--<br>Dead on the fell at the first charge,<br>Or dead by Wantage wall;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Lift not my head from bloody ground,<br>Bear not my body home,<br>For all the earth is Roman earth<br>And I shall die in Rome."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then Alfred, King of England,<br>Bade blow the horns of war,<br>And fling the Golden Dragon out,<br>With crackle and acclaim and shout,<br>Scrolled and aflame and far.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And under the Golden Dragon<br>Went Wessex all along,<br>Past the sharp point of the cloven ways,<br>Out from the black wood into the blaze<br>Of sun and steel and song.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And when they came to the open land<br>They wheeled, deployed and stood;<br>Midmost were Marcus and the King,<br>And Eldred on the right-hand wing,<br>And leftwards Colan darkling,<br>In the last shade of the wood.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But the Earls of the Great Army<br>Lay like a long half moon,<br>Ten poles before their palisades,<br>With wide-winged helms and runic blades<br>Red giants of an age of raids,<br>In the thornland of Ethandune.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Midmost the saddles rose and swayed,<br>And a stir of horses' manes,<br>Where Guthrum and a few rode high<br>On horses seized in victory;<br>But Ogier went on foot to die,<br>In the old way of the Danes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Far to the King's left Elf the bard<br>Led on the eastern wing<br>With songs and spells that change the blood;<br>And on the King's right Harold stood,<br>The kinsman of the King.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Young Harold, coarse, with colours gay,<br>Smoking with oil and musk,<br>And the pleasant violence of the young,<br>Pushed through his people, giving tongue<br>Foewards, where, grey as cobwebs hung,<br>The banners of the Usk.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But as he came before his line<br>A little space along,<br>His beardless face broke into mirth,<br>And he cried: "What broken bits of earth<br>Are here? For what their clothes are worth<br>I would sell them for a song."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For Colan was hung with raiment<br>Tattered like autumn leaves,<br>And his men were all as thin as saints,<br>And all as poor as thieves.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">No bows nor slings nor bolts they bore,<br>But bills and pikes ill-made;<br>And none but Colan bore a sword,<br>And rusty was its blade.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And Colan's eyes with mystery<br>And iron laughter stirred,<br>And he spoke aloud, but lightly<br>Not labouring to be heard.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Oh, truly we be broken hearts,<br>For that cause, it is said,<br>We light our candles to that Lord<br>That broke Himself for bread.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But though we hold but bitterly<br>What land the Saxon leaves,<br>Though Ireland be but a land of saints,<br>And Wales a land of thieves,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I say you yet shall weary<br>Of the working of your word,<br>That stricken spirits never strike<br>Nor lean hands hold a sword.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And if ever ye ride in Ireland,<br>The jest may yet be said,<br>There is the land of broken hearts,<br>And the land of broken heads."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Not less barbarian laughter<br>Choked Harold like a flood,<br>"And shall I fight with scarecrows<br>That am of Guthrum's blood?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Meeting may be of war-men,<br>Where the best war-man wins;<br>But all this carrion a man shoots<br>Before the fight begins."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And stopping in his onward strides,<br>He snatched a bow in scorn<br>From some mean slave, and bent it on<br>Colan, whose doom grew dark; and shone<br>Stars evil over Caerleon,<br>In the place where he was born.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For Colan had not bow nor sling,<br>On a lonely sword leaned he,<br>Like Arthur on Excalibur<br>In the battle by the sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">To his great gold ear-ring Harold<br>Tugged back the feathered tail,<br>And swift had sprung the arrow,<br>But swifter sprang the Gael.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Whirling the one sword round his head,<br>A great wheel in the sun,<br>He sent it splendid through the sky,<br>Flying before the shaft could fly--<br>It smote Earl Harold over the eye,<br>And blood began to run.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Colan stood bare and weaponless,<br>Earl Harold, as in pain,<br>Strove for a smile, put hand to head,<br>Stumbled and suddenly fell dead;<br>And the small white daisies all waxed red<br>With blood out of his brain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And all at that marvel of the sword,<br>Cast like a stone to slay,<br>Cried out. Said Alfred: "Who would see<br>Signs, must give all things. Verily<br>Man shall not taste of victory<br>Till he throws his sword away."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then Alfred, prince of England,<br>And all the Christian earls,<br>Unhooked their swords and held them up,<br>Each offered to Colan, like a cup<br>Of chrysolite and pearls.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the King said, "Do thou take my sword<br>Who have done this deed of fire,<br>For this is the manner of Christian men,<br>Whether of steel or priestly pen,<br>That they cast their hearts out of their ken<br>To get their heart's desire.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And whether ye swear a hive of monks,<br>Or one fair wife to friend,<br>This is the manner of Christian men,<br>That their oath endures the end.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"For love, our Lord, at the end of the world,<br>Sits a red horse like a throne,<br>With a brazen helm and an iron bow,<br>But one arrow alone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Love with the shield of the Broken Heart<br>Ever his bow doth bend,<br>With a single shaft for a single prize,<br>And the ultimate bolt that parts and flies<br>Comes with a thunder of split skies,<br>And a sound of souls that rend.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"So shall you earn a king's sword,<br>Who cast your sword away."<br>And the King took, with a random eye,<br>A rude axe from a hind hard by<br>And turned him to the fray.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For the swords of the Earls of Daneland<br>Flamed round the fallen lord.<br>The first blood woke the trumpet-tune,<br>As in monk's rhyme or wizard's rune,<br>Beginneth the battle of Ethandune<br>With the throwing of the sword.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"></a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>BOOK VI ETHANDUNE: THE SLAYING OF THE CHIEFS</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>As the sea flooding the flat sands<br>Flew on the sea-born horde,<br>The two hosts shocked with dust and din,<br>Left of the Latian paladin,<br>Clanged all Prince Harold's howling kin<br>On Colan and the sword.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Crashed in the midst on Marcus,<br>Ogier with Guthrum by,<br>And eastward of such central stir,<br>Far to the right and faintlier,<br>The house of Elf the harp-player,<br>Struck Eldred's with a cry.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=400536" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The centre swat for weariness,<br>Stemming the scream</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br/></a><a href="https://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="https://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Gilbert+Keith+Chesterton">Gilbert Keith Chesterton</a></strong></div>

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