The Ballad of the White Horse | Page 6

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 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