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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117660" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book I: The Vision of the King</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Before the gods that made the gods<br>Had seen their sunrise pass,<br>The White Horse of the White Horse Vale<br>Was cut out of the grass.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Before the gods that made the gods<br>Had drunk at dawn their fill,<br>The White Horse of the White Horse Vale<br>Was hoary on the hill.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Age beyond age on British land,<br>Aeons on aeons gone,<br>Was peace and war in western hills,<br>And the White Horse looked on.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the White Horse knew England<br>When there was none to know;<br>He saw the first oar break or bend,<br>He saw heaven fall and the world end,<br>O God, how long ago.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the end of the world was long ago,<br>And all we dwell to-day<br>As children of some second birth,<br>Like a strange people left on earth<br>After a judgment day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the end of the world was long ago,<br>When the ends of the world waxed free,<br>When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,<br>And the sun drowned in the sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky<br>And whoso hearkened right<br>Could only hear the plunging<br>Of the nations in the night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When the ends of the earth came marching in<br>To torch and cresset gleam.<br>And the roads of the world that lead to Rome<br>Were filled with faces that moved like foam,<br>Like faces in a dream.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And men rode out of the eastern lands,<br>Broad river and burning plain;<br>Trees that are Titan flowers to see,<br>And tiger skies, striped horribly,<br>With tints of tropic rain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where Ind's enamelled peaks arise<br>Around that inmost one,<br>Where ancient eagles on its brink,<br>Vast as archangels, gather and drink<br>The sacrament of the sun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And men brake out of the northern lands,<br>Enormous lands alone,<br>Where a spell is laid upon life and lust<br>And the rain is changed to a silver dust<br>And the sea to a great green stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And a Shape that moveth murkily<br>In mirrors of ice and night,<br>Hath blanched with fear all beasts and birds,<br>As death and a shock of evil words<br>Blast a man's hair with white.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the cry of the palms and the purple moons,<br>Or the cry of the frost and foam,<br>Swept ever around an inmost place,<br>And the din of distant race on race<br>Cried and replied round Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And there was death on the Emperor<br>And night upon the Pope:<br>And Alfred, hiding in deep grass,<br>Hardened his heart with hope.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A sea-folk blinder than the sea<br>Broke all about his land,<br>But Alfred up against them bare<br>And gripped the ground and grasped the air,<br>Staggered, and strove to stand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He bent them back with spear and spade,<br>With desperate dyke and wall,<br>With foemen leaning on his shield<br>And roaring on him when he reeled;<br>And no help came at all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He broke them with a broken sword<br>A little towards the sea,<br>And for one hour of panting peace,<br>Ringed with a roar that would not cease,<br>With golden crown and girded fleece<br>Made laws under a tree.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Northmen came about our land<br>A Christless chivalry:<br>Who knew not of the arch or pen,<br>Great, beautiful half-witted men<br>From the sunrise and the sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Misshapen ships stood on the deep<br>Full of strange gold and fire,<br>And hairy men, as huge as sin<br>With horned heads, came wading in<br>Through the long, low sea-mire.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our towns were shaken of tall kings<br>With scarlet beards like blood:<br>The world turned empty where they trod,<br>They took the kindly cross of God<br>And cut it up for wood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their souls were drifting as the sea,<br>And all good towns and lands<br>They only saw with heavy eyes,<br>And broke with heavy hands,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their gods were sadder than the sea,<br>Gods of a wandering will,<br>Who cried for blood like beasts at night,<br>Sadly, from hill to hill.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They seemed as trees walking the earth,<br>As witless and as tall,<br>Yet they took hold upon the heavens<br>And no help came at all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They bred like birds in English woods,<br>They rooted like the rose,<br>When Alfred came to Athelney<br>To hide him from their bows</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There was not English armour left,<br>Nor any English thing,<br>When Alfred came to Athelney<br>To be an English king.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For earthquake swallowing earthquake<br>Uprent the Wessex tree;<br>The whirlpool of the pagan sway<br>Had swirled his sires as sticks away<br>When a flood smites the sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the great kings of Wessex<br>Wearied and sank in gore,<br>And even their ghosts in that great stress<br>Grew greyer and greyer, less and less,<br>With the lords that died in Lyonesse<br>And the king that comes no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the God of the Golden Dragon<br>Was dumb upon his throne,<br>And the lord of the Golden Dragon<br>Ran in the woods alone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And if ever he climbed the crest of luck<br>And set the flag before,<br>Returning as a wheel returns,<br>Came ruin and the rain that burns,<br>And all began once more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And naught was left King Alfred<br>But shameful tears of rage,<br>In the island in the river<br>In the end of all his age.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the island in the river<br>He was broken to his knee:<br>And he read, writ with an iron pen,<br>That God had wearied of Wessex men<br>And given their country, field and fen,<br>To the devils of the sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he saw in a little picture,<br>Tiny and far away,<br>His mother sitting in Egbert's hall,<br>And a book she showed him, very small,<br>Where a sapphire Mary sat in stall<br>With a golden Christ at play.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was wrought in the monk's slow manner,<br>From silver and sanguine shell,<br>Where the scenes are little and terrible,<br>Keyholes of heaven and hell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the river island of Athelney,<br>With the river running past,<br>In colours of such simple creed<br>All things sprang at him, sun and weed,<br>Till the grass grew to be grass indeed<br>And the tree was a tree at last.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fearfully plain the flowers grew,<br>Like the child's book to read,<br>Or like a friend's face seen in a glass;<br>He looked; and there Our Lady was,<br>She stood and stroked the tall live grass<br>As a man strokes his steed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her face was like an open word<br>When brave men speak and choose,<br>The very colours of her coat<br>Were better than good news.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She spoke not, nor turned not,<br>Nor any sign she cast,<br>Only she stood up straight and free,<br>Between the flowers in Athelney,<br>And the river running past.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One dim ancestral jewel hung<br>On his ruined armour grey,<br>He rent and cast it at her feet:<br>Where, after centuries, with slow feet,<br>Men came from hall and school and street<br>And found it where it lay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Mother of God," the wanderer said,<br>"I am but a common king,<br>Nor will I ask what saints may ask,<br>To see a secret thing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"The gates of heaven are fearful gates<br>Worse than the gates of hell;<br>Not I would break the splendours barred<br>Or seek to know the thing they guard,<br>Which is too good to tell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"But for this earth most pitiful,<br>This little land I know,<br>If that which is for ever is,<br>Or if our hearts shall break with bliss,<br>Seeing the stranger go?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"When our last bow is broken, Queen,<br>And our last javelin cast,<br>Under some sad, green evening sky,<br>Holding a ruined cross on high,<br>Under warm westland grass to lie,<br>Shall we come home at last?"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And a voice came human but high up,<br>Like a cottage climbed among<br>The clouds; or a serf of hut and croft<br>That sits by his hovel fire as oft,<br>But hears on his old bare roof aloft<br>A belfry burst in song.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,<br>We do not guard our gain,<br>The heaviest hind may easily<br>Come silently and suddenly<br>Upon me in a lane.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"And any little maid that walks<br>In good thoughts apart,<br>May break the guard of the Three Kings<br>And see the dear and dreadful things<br>I hid within my heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"The meanest man in grey fields gone<br>Behind the set of sun,<br>Heareth between star and other star,<br>Through the door of the darkness fallen ajar,<br>The council, eldest of things that are,<br>The talk of the Three in One.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,<br>We do not guard our gold,<br>Men may uproot where worlds begin,<br>Or read the name of the nameless sin;<br>But if he fail or if he win<br>To no good man is told.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"The men of the East may spell the stars,<br>And times and triumphs mark,<br>But the men signed of the cross of Christ<br>Go gaily in the dark.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"The men of the East may search the scrolls<br>For sure fates and fame,<br>But the men that drink the blood of God<br>Go singing to their shame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"The wise men know what wicked things<br>Are written on the sky,<br>They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,<br>Hearing the heavy purple wings,<br>Where the forgotten seraph kings<br>Still plot how God shall die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"The wise men know all evil things<br>Under the twisted trees,<br>Where the perverse in pleasure pine<br>And men are weary of green wine<br>And sick of crimson seas.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"But you and all the kind of Christ<br>Are ignorant and brave,<br>And you have wars you hardly win<br>And souls you hardly save.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"I tell you naught for your comfort,<br>Yea, naught for your desire,<br>Save that the sky grows darker yet<br>And the sea rises higher.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Night shall be thrice night over you,<br>And heaven an iron cope.<br>Do you have joy without a cause,<br>Yea, faith without a hope?"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even as she spoke she was not,<br>Nor any word said he,<br>He only heard, still as he stood<br>Under the old night's nodding hood,<br>The sea-folk breaking down the wood<br>Like a high tide from sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He only heard the heathen men,<br>Whose eyes are blue and bleak,<br>Singing about some cruel thing<br>Done by a great and smiling king<br>In daylight on a deck.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He only heard the heathen men,<br>Whose eyes are blue and blind,<br>Singing what shameful things are done<br>Between the sunlit sea and the sun<br>When the land is left behind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=G.K.+Chesterton">G.K. Chesterton</a> from <i>The Ballad of the White Horse</i><div class=q>
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