The Ballad of the White Horse | Page 5

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.