The Ballad of the White Horse | Page 3

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Many thanks to Paul Bonner of the Herald-Sun for typing this poem.
Error messages go to Martin Ward >
THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE
By G.K. Chesterton

DEDICATION
Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why
bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight
of strong lords and light?
Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should
one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder

To smoke and choke the sun?
In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?

These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these
ride high in history,
But these shall not return.
Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall
not wake with ballad strings
The good time of the smaller things,

We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.
Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the broidery of Bayeux
The
England of that dawn remains,
And this of Alfred and the Danes

Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns
Too English to be true.
Of a good king on an island
That ruled once on a time;
And as he
walked by an apple tree
There came green devils out of the sea

With sea-plants trailing heavily
And tracks of opal slime.
Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;
His days as our days ran,
He also looked
forth for an hour
On peopled plains and skies that lower,
From
those few windows in the tower
That is the head of a man.
But who shall look from Alfred's hood
Or breathe his breath alive?

His century like a small dark cloud
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