The Ballad of the White Horse | Page 6

fill,?His face a dreaming furnace,?His body a walking hill.
In the old wars of Wessex?His sword had sunken deep,?But all his friends, he signed and said,?Were broken about Ethelred;?And between the deep drink and the dead?He had fallen upon sleep.
"Come not to me, King Alfred, Save always for the ale:?Why should my harmless hinds be slain?Because the chiefs cry once again,?As in all fights, that we shall gain,?And in all fights we fail?
"Your scalds still thunder and prophesy?That crown that never comes;?Friend, I will watch the certain things,?Swine, and slow moons like silver rings,?And the ripening of the plums."
And Alfred answered, drinking,?And gravely, without blame,?"Nor bear I boast of scald or king,?The thing I bear is a lesser thing,?But comes in a better name.
"Out of the mouth of the Mother of God,?More than the doors of doom,?I call the muster of Wessex men?From grassy hamlet or ditch or den,?To break and be broken, God knows when,?But I have seen for whom.
Out of the mouth of the Mother of God?Like a little word come I;?For I go gathering Christian men?From sunken paving and ford and fen,?To die in a battle, God knows when,?By God, but I know why.
"And this is the word of Mary,?The word of the world's desire?`No more of comfort shall ye get,?Save that the sky grows darker yet?And the sea rises higher.' "
Then silence sank. And slowly?Arose the sea-land lord,?Like some vast beast for mystery,?He filled the room and porch and sky,?And from a cobwebbed nail on high?Unhooked his heavy sword.
Up on the shrill sea-downs and up?Went Alfred all alone,?Turning but once e'er the door was shut,?Shouting to Eldred over his butt,?That he bring all spears to the woodman's hut?Hewn under Egbert's Stone.
And he turned his back and broke the fern,?And fought the moths of dusk,?And went on his way for other friends?Friends fallen of all the wide world's ends,?From Rome that wrath and pardon sends?And the grey tribes on Usk.
He saw gigantic tracks of death?And many a shape of doom,?Good steadings to grey ashes gone?And a monk's house white like a skeleton?In the green crypt of the combe.
And in many a Roman villa?Earth and her ivies eat,?Saw coloured pavements sink and fade?In flowers, and the windy colonnade?Like the spectre of a street.
But the cold stars clustered?Among the cold pines?Ere he was half on his pilgrimage?Over the western lines.
And the white dawn widened?Ere he came to the last pine,?Where Mark, the man from Italy,?Still made the Christian sign.
The long farm lay on the large hill-side,?Flat like a painted plan,?And by the side the low white house,?Where dwelt the southland man.
A bronzed man, with a bird's bright eye,?And a strong bird's beak and brow,?His skin was brown like buried gold,?And of certain of his sires was told?That they came in the shining ship of old,?With Caesar in the prow.
His fruit trees stood like soldiers?Drilled in a straight line,?His strange, stiff olives did not fail,?And all the kings of the earth drank ale,?But he drank wine.
Wide over wasted British plains?Stood never an arch or dome,?Only the trees to toss and reel,?The tribes to bicker, the beasts to squeal;?But the eyes in his head were strong like steel,?And his soul remembered Rome.
Then Alfred of the lonely spear?Lifted his lion head;?And fronted with the Italian's eye,?Asking him of his whence and why,?King Alfred stood and said:
"I am that oft-defeated King?Whose failure fills the land,?Who fled before the Danes of old,?Who chaffered with the Danes with gold,?Who now upon the Wessex wold?Hardly has feet to stand.
"But out of the mouth of the Mother of God?I have seen the truth like fire,?This--that the sky grows darker yet?And the sea rises higher."
Long looked the Roman on the land;?The trees as golden crowns?Blazed, drenched with dawn and dew-empearled?While faintlier coloured, freshlier curled,?The clouds from underneath the world?Stood up over the downs.
"These vines be ropes that drag me hard,"?He said. "I go not far;?Where would you meet? For you must hold?Half Wiltshire and the White Horse wold,?And the Thames bank to Owsenfold,?If Wessex goes to war.
"Guthrum sits strong on either bank?And you must press his lines?Inwards, and eastward drive him down;?I doubt if you shall take the crown?Till you have taken London town.?For me, I have the vines."
"If each man on the Judgment Day?Meet God on a plain alone,"?Said Alfred, "I will speak for you?As for myself, and call it true?That you brought all fighting folk you knew?Lined under Egbert's Stone.
"Though I be in the dust ere then,?I know where you will be."?And shouldering suddenly his spear?He faded like some elfin fear,?Where the tall pines ran up, tier on tier?Tree overtoppling tree.
He shouldered his spear at morning?And laughed to lay it on,?But he leaned on his spear as on a staff,?With might and little mood to laugh,?Or ever he sighted chick or calf?Of Colan of Caerleon.
For the man