The Ballad of the White Horse | Page 5

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.
The rook croaked homeward heavily,?The west was clear and warm,?The smoke of evening food and ease?Rose like a blue tree in the trees?When he came to Eldred's farm.
But Eldred's farm was fallen awry,?Like an old cripple's bones,?And Eldred's tools were red with rust,?And on his well was a green crust,?And purple thistles upward thrust,?Between the kitchen stones.
But smoke of some good feasting?Went upwards evermore,?And Eldred's doors stood wide apart?For loitering foot or labouring cart,?And Eldred's great and foolish heart?Stood open like his door.
A mighty man was Eldred,?A bulk for casks to