Why bend above a shapeless shroud

  Seeking in such archaic cloud

  Sight of strong lords and light?

  Where seven sunken Englands

  Lie buried one by one,

  Why should one idle spade, I wonder,

  Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder

  To smoke and choke the sun?

  In cloud of clay so cast to heaven

  What shape shall man discern?

  These lords may light the mystery

  Of mastery or victory,

  And these ride high in history,

  But these shall not return.

  Gored on the Norman gonfalon

  The Golden Dragon died:

  We shall not wake with ballad strings

  The good time of the smaller things,

  We shall not see the holy kings

  Ride down by Severn side.

  Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured

  As the broidery of Bayeux

  The England of that dawn remains,

  And this of Alfred and the Danes

  Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns

  Too English to be true.

  Of a good king on an island

  That ruled once on a time;

  And as he walked by an apple tree

  There came green devils out of the sea

  With sea-plants trailing heavily

  And tracks of opal slime.

  Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;

  His days as our days ran,

  He also looked forth for an hour

  On peopled plains and skies that lower,

  From those few windows in the tower

  That is the head of a man.

  But who shall look from Alfred’s hood

  Or breathe his breath alive?

  His century like a small dark cloud

  Drifts far; it is an eyeless crowd,

  Where the tortured trumpets scream aloud

  And the dense arrows drive.

  Lady, by one light only

  We look from Alfred’s eyes,

  We know he saw athwart the wreck

  The sign that hangs about your neck,

  Where One more than Melchizedek

  Is dead and never dies.

  Therefore I bring these rhymes to you

  Who brought the cross to me,

  Since on you flaming without flaw

  I saw the sign that Guthrum saw

  When he let break his ships of awe,

  And laid peace on the sea.

  Do you remember when we went

  Under a dragon moon,

  And ‘mid volcanic tints of night

  Walked where they fought the unknown fight

  And saw black trees on the battle-height,

  Black thorn on Ethandune?

  And I thought, “I will go with you,

  As man with God has gone,

  And wander with a wandering star,

  The wandering heart of things that are,

  The fiery cross of love and war

  That like yourself, goes on.”

  O go you onward; where you are

  Shall honour and laughter be,

  Past purpled forest and pearled foam,

  God’s winged pavilion free to roam,

  Your face, that is a wandering home,

  A flying home for me.

  Ride through the silent earthquake lands,

  Wide as a waste is wide,

  Across these days like deserts, when

  Pride and a little scratching pen

  Have dried and split the hearts of men,

  Heart of the heroes, ride.

  Up through an empty house of stars,

  Being what heart you are,

  Up the inhuman steeps of space

  As on a staircase go in grace,

  Carrying the firelight on your face

  Beyond the loneliest star.

  Take these; in memory of the hour

  We strayed a space from home

  And saw the smoke-hued hamlets, quaint

  With Westland king and Westland saint,

  And watched the western glory faint

  Along the road to Frome.

  BOOK I. THE VISION OF THE KING

  Before the gods that made the gods

  Had seen their sunrise pass,

  The White Horse of the White Horse Vale

  Was cut out of the grass.

  Before the gods that made the gods

  Had drunk at dawn their fill,

  The White Horse of the White Horse Vale

  Was hoary on the hill.

  Age beyond age on British land,

  Aeons on aeons gone,

  Was peace and war in western hills,

  And the White Horse looked on.

  For the White Horse knew England

  When there was none to know;

  He saw the first oar break or bend,

  He saw heaven fall and the world end,

  O God, how long ago.

  For the end of the world was long ago,

  And all we dwell to-day

  As children of some second birth,

  Like a strange people left on earth

  After a judgment day.

  For the end of the world was long ago,

  When the ends of the world waxed free,

  When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,

  And the sun drowned in the sea.

  When Caesar’s sun fell out of the sky

  And whoso hearkened right

  Could only hear the plunging

  Of the nations in the night.

  When the ends of the earth came marching in

  To torch and cresset gleam.

  And the roads of the world that lead to Rome

  Were filled with faces that moved like foam,

  Like faces in a dream.

  And men rode out of the eastern lands,

  Broad river and burning plain;

  Trees that are Titan flowers to see,

  And tiger skies, striped horribly,

  With tints of tropic rain.

  Where Ind’s enamelled peaks arise

  Around that inmost one,

  Where ancient eagles on its brink,

  Vast as archangels, gather and drink

  The sacrament of the sun.

  And men brake out of the northern lands,

  Enormous lands alone,

  Where a spell is laid upon life and lust

  And the rain is changed to a silver dust

  And the sea to a great green stone.

  And a Shape that moveth murkily

  In mirrors of ice and night,

  Hath blanched with fear all beasts and birds,

  As death and a shock of evil words

  Blast a man’s hair with white.

  And the cry of the palms and the purple moons,

  Or the cry of the frost and foam,

  Swept ever around an inmost place,

  And the din of distant race on race

  Cried and replied round Rome.

  And there was death on the Emperor

  And night upon the Pope:

  And Alfred, hiding in deep grass,

  Hardened his heart with hope.

  A sea-folk blinder than the sea

  Broke all about his land,

  But Alfred up against them bare

  And gripped the ground and grasped the air,

  Staggered, and strove to stand.

  He bent them back with spear and spade,

  With desperate dyke and wall,

  With foemen leaning on his shield

  And roaring on him when he reeled;

  And no help came at all.

  He broke them with a broken sword

  A little towards the sea,

  And for one hour of panting peace,

  Ringed with a roar that would not cease,

  With golden crown and girded fleece

  Made laws under a tree.

  The Northmen came about our land

  A Christless chivalry:

  Who knew not of the arch or pen,

  Great, beautiful half-witted men

  From the sunrise and the sea.

  Misshapen ships stood on the deep

  Full of strange gold and fire,

  And hairy men, as huge as sin

  With horned heads, came wading in

  Through the long, low sea-mire.

  Our towns were shaken of tall kings

  With scarlet beards like blood:

  The world turned empty where they trod,

  They took the kindly cross of God

  And cut it up for wood.

  Their souls were drifting as the sea,

  And all good towns and lands

  They only saw with heavy eyes,

  And broke with heavy hands,

  Their gods were sadder than the sea,

  Gods of a wandering will,

  Who cried for blood like beasts at night,

  Sadly, from hill to hill.

  They seemed as trees walking the earth,

  As witless and as tall,

  Yet they took hold upon the heavens

  And no help came at all.

  They bred like birds in English woods,

  They rooted like the rose,

  When Alfred came to Athelney

  To hide him from their bows

  There was not English armour left,

  Nor any English thing,

  When Alfred came to Athelney

  To be an English king.

  For earthquake swallowing earthquake

  Uprent the Wessex tree;

  The whirlpool of the pagan sway

  Had swirled his sires as sticks away

  When a flood smites the sea.

  And the great kings of Wessex

  Wearied and sank in gore,

  And even their ghosts in that great stress

  Grew greyer and greyer, less and less,

  With the lords that died in Lyonesse

  And the king that comes no more.

  And the God of the Golden Dragon

  Was dumb upon his throne,

  And the lord of the Golden Dragon

  Ran in the woods alone.

  And if ever he climbed the crest of luck

  And set the flag before,

  Returning as a wheel returns,

  Came ruin and the rain that burns,

  And all began once more.

  And naught was left King Alfred

  But shameful tears of rage,

  In the island in the river

  In the end of all his age.

  In the island in the river

  He was broken to his knee:

  And he read, writ with an iron pen,

  That God had wearied of Wessex men

  And given their country, field and fen,

  To the devils of the sea.

  And he saw in a little picture,

  Tiny and far away,

  His mother sitting in Egbert’s hall,

  And a book she showed him, very small,

  Where a sapphire Mary sat in stall

  With a golden Christ at play.

  It was wrought in the monk’s slow manner,

  From silver and sanguine shell,

  Where the scenes are little and terrible,

  Keyholes of heaven and hell.

  In the river island of Athelney,

  With the river running past,

  In colours of such simple creed

  All things sprang at him, sun and weed,

  Till the grass grew to be grass indeed

  And the tree was a tree at last.

  Fearfully plain the flowers grew,

  Like the child’s book to read,

  Or like a friend’s face seen in a glass;

  He looked; and there Our Lady was,

  She stood and stroked the tall live grass

  As a man strokes his steed.

  Her face was like an open word

  When brave men speak and choose,

  The very colours of her coat

  Were better than good news.

  She spoke not, nor turned not,

  Nor any sign she cast,

  Only she stood up straight and free,

  Between the flowers in Athelney,

  And the river running past.

  One dim ancestral jewel hung

  On his ruined armour grey,

  He rent and cast it at her feet:

  Where, after centuries, with slow feet,

  Men came from hall and school and street

  And found it where it lay.

  “Mother of God,” the wanderer said,

  “I am but a common king,

  Nor will I ask what saints may ask,

  To see a secret thing.

  “The gates of heaven are fearful gates

  Worse than the gates of hell;

  Not I would break the splendours barred

  Or seek to know the thing they guard,

  Which is too good to tell.

  “But for this earth most pitiful,

  This little land I know,

  If that which is for ever is,

  Or if our hearts shall break with bliss,

  Seeing the stranger go?

  “When our last bow is broken, Queen,

  And our last javelin cast,

  Under some sad, green evening sky,

  Holding a ruined cross on high,

  Under warm westland grass to lie,

  Shall we come home at last?”

  And a voice came human but high up,

  Like a cottage climbed among

  The clouds; or a serf of hut and croft

  That sits by his hovel fire as oft,

  But hears on his old bare roof aloft

  A belfry burst in song.

  “The gates of heaven are lightly locked,

  We do not guard our gain,

  The heaviest hind may easily

  Come silently and suddenly

  Upon me in a lane.

  “And any little maid that walks

  In good thoughts apart,

  May break the guard of the Three Kings

  And see the dear and dreadful things

  I hid within my heart.

  “The meanest man in grey fields gone

  Behind the set of sun,

  Heareth between star and other star,

  Through the door of the darkness fallen ajar,

  The council, eldest of things that are,

  The talk of the Three in One.

  “The gates of heaven are lightly locked,

  We do not guard our gold,

  Men may uproot where worlds begin,

  Or read the name of the nameless sin;

  But if he fail or if he win

  To no good man is told.

  “The men of the East may spell the stars,

  And times and triumphs mark,

  But the men signed of the cross of Christ

  Go gaily in the dark.

  “The men of the East may search the scrolls

  For sure fates and fame,

  But the men that drink the blood of God

  Go singing to their shame.

  “The wise men know what wicked things

  Are written on the sky,

  They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,

  Hearing the heavy purple wings,

  Where the forgotten seraph kings

  Still plot how God shall die.

  “The wise men know all evil things

  Under the twisted trees,

  Where the perverse in pleasure pine

  And men are weary of green wine

  And sick of crimson seas.

  “But you and all the kind of Christ

  Are ignorant and brave,

  And you have wars you hardly win

  And souls you hardly save.

  “I tell you naught for your comfort,

  Yea, naught for your desire,

  Save that the sky grows darker yet

  And the sea rises higher.

  “Night shall be thrice night over you,

  And heaven an iron cope.

  Do you have joy without a cause,

  Yea, faith without a hope?”

  Even as she spoke she was not,

  Nor any word said he,

  He only heard, still as he stood

  Under the old night’s nodding hood,

  The sea-folk breaking down the wood

  Like a high tide from sea.

  He only heard the heathen men,

  Whose eyes are blue and bleak,

  Singing about some cruel thing

  Done by a great and smiling king

  In daylight on a deck.

  He only heard the heathen men,

  Whose eyes are blue and blind,

  Singing what shameful things are done

  Between the sunlit sea and the sun

  When the land is left behind.

  BOOK II. THE GATHERING OF THE CHIEFS

  Up across windy wastes and up

  Went Alfred over the shaws,

  Shaken of the joy of giants,

  The joy without a cause.

  In the slopes away to the western bays,

  Where blows not ever a tree,

  He washed his soul in the west wind

  And his body in the sea.

  And he set to rhyme his ale-measures,

  And he sang aloud his laws,

  Because of the joy of the giants,

  The joy without a cause.

  The King went gathering Wessex men,

  As grain out of the chaff

  The few that were alive to die,

  Laughing, as littered skulls that lie

  After lost battles turn to the sky

  An everlasting laugh.

  The King went gathering Christian men,

  As wheat out of the husk;

  Eldred, the Franklin by the sea,

  And Mark, the man from Italy,

  And Colan of the Sacred Tree,

  From the old tribe on Usk.

 

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