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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117661" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book II: The Gathering of the Chiefs</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Up across windy wastes and up<br>Went Alfred over the shaws,<br>Shaken of the joy of giants,<br>The joy without a cause.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the slopes away to the western bays,<br>Where blows not ever a tree,<br>He washed his soul in the west wind<br>And his body in the sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he set to rhyme his ale-measures,<br>And he sang aloud his laws,<br>Because of the joy of the giants,<br>The joy without a cause.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The King went gathering Wessex men,<br>As grain out of the chaff<br>The few that were alive to die,<br>Laughing, as littered skulls that lie<br>After lost battles turn to the sky<br>An everlasting laugh.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The King went gathering Christian men,<br>As wheat out of the husk;<br>Eldred, the Franklin by the sea,<br>And Mark, the man from Italy,<br>And Colan of the Sacred Tree,<br>From the old tribe on Usk.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The rook croaked homeward heavily,<br>The west was clear and warm,<br>The smoke of evening food and ease<br>Rose like a blue tree in the trees<br>When he came to Eldred's farm.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But Eldred's farm was fallen awry,<br>Like an old cripple's bones,<br>And Eldred's tools were red with rust,<br>And on his well was a green crust,<br>And purple thistles upward thrust,<br>Between the kitchen stones.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But smoke of some good feasting<br>Went upwards evermore,<br>And Eldred's doors stood wide apart<br>For loitering foot or labouring cart,<br>And Eldred's great and foolish heart<br>Stood open like his door.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A mighty man was Eldred,<br>A bulk for casks to fill,<br>His face a dreaming furnace,<br>His body a walking hill.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the old wars of Wessex<br>His sword had sunken deep,<br>But all his friends, he signed and said,<br>Were broken about Ethelred;<br>And between the deep drink and the dead<br>He had fallen upon sleep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Come not to me, King Alfred,<br>Save always for the ale:<br>Why should my harmless hinds be slain<br>Because the chiefs cry once again,<br>As in all fights, that we shall gain,<br>And in all fights we fail?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Your scalds still thunder and prophesy<br>That crown that never comes;<br>Friend, I will watch the certain things,<br>Swine, and slow moons like silver rings,<br>And the ripening of the plums."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And Alfred answered, drinking,<br>And gravely, without blame,<br>"Nor bear I boast of scald or king,<br>The thing I bear is a lesser thing,<br>But comes in a better name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Out of the mouth of the Mother of God,<br>More than the doors of doom,<br>I call the muster of Wessex men<br>From grassy hamlet or ditch or den,<br>To break and be broken, God knows when,<br>But I have seen for whom.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Out of the mouth of the Mother of God<br>Like a little word come I;<br>For I go gathering Christian men<br>From sunken paving and ford and fen,<br>To die in a battle, God knows when,<br>By God, but I know why.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"And this is the word of Mary,<br>The word of the world's desire<br>'No more of comfort shall ye get,<br>Save that the sky grows darker yet<br>And the sea rises higher.' "</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then silence sank. And slowly<br>Arose the sea-land lord,<br>Like some vast beast for mystery,<br>He filled the room and porch and sky,<br>And from a cobwebbed nail on high<br>Unhooked his heavy sword.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Up on the shrill sea-downs and up<br>Went Alfred all alone,<br>Turning but once e'er the door was shut,<br>Shouting to Eldred over his butt,<br>That he bring all spears to the woodman's hut<br>Hewn under Egbert's Stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he turned his back and broke the fern,<br>And fought the moths of dusk,<br>And went on his way for other friends<br>Friends fallen of all the wide world's ends,<br>From Rome that wrath and pardon sends<br>And the grey tribes on Usk.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He saw gigantic tracks of death<br>And many a shape of doom,<br>Good steadings to grey ashes gone<br>And a monk's house white like a skeleton<br>In the green crypt of the combe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And in many a Roman villa<br>Earth and her ivies eat,<br>Saw coloured pavements sink and fade<br>In flowers, and the windy colonnade<br>Like the spectre of a street.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the cold stars clustered<br>Among the cold pines<br>Ere he was half on his pilgrimage<br>Over the western lines.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the white dawn widened<br>Ere he came to the last pine,<br>Where Mark, the man from Italy,<br>Still made the Christian sign.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The long farm lay on the large hill-side,<br>Flat like a painted plan,<br>And by the side the low white house,<br>Where dwelt the southland man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A bronzed man, with a bird's bright eye,<br>And a strong bird's beak and brow,<br>His skin was brown like buried gold,<br>And of certain of his sires was told<br>That they came in the shining ship of old,<br>With Caesar in the prow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His fruit trees stood like soldiers<br>Drilled in a straight line,<br>His strange, stiff olives did not fail,<br>And all the kings of the earth drank ale,<br>But he drank wine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wide over wasted British plains<br>Stood never an arch or dome,<br>Only the trees to toss and reel,<br>The tribes to bicker, the beasts to squeal;<br>But the eyes in his head were strong like steel,<br>And his soul remembered Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then Alfred of the lonely spear<br>Lifted his lion head;<br>And fronted with the Italian's eye,<br>Asking him of his whence and why,<br>King Alfred stood and said:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"I am that oft-defeated King<br>Whose failure fills the land,<br>Who fled before the Danes of old,<br>Who chaffered with the Danes with gold,<br>Who now upon the Wessex wold<br>Hardly has feet to stand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"But out of the mouth of the Mother of God<br>I have seen the truth like fire,<br>This--that the sky grows darker yet<br>And the sea rises higher."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Long looked the Roman on the land;<br>The trees as golden crowns<br>Blazed, drenched with dawn and dew-empearled<br>While faintlier coloured, freshlier curled,<br>The clouds from underneath the world<br>Stood up over the downs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"These vines be ropes that drag me hard,"<br>He said. "I go not far;<br>Where would you meet? For you must hold<br>Half Wiltshire and the White Horse wold,<br>And the Thames bank to Owsenfold,<br>If Wessex goes to war.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Guthrum sits strong on either bank<br>And you must press his lines<br>Inwards, and eastward drive him down;<br>I doubt if you shall take the crown<br>Till you have taken London town.<br>For me, I have the vines."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"If each man on the Judgment Day<br>Meet God on a plain alone,"<br>Said Alfred, "I will speak for you<br>As for myself, and call it true<br>That you brought all fighting folk you knew<br>Lined under Egbert's Stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Though I be in the dust ere then,<br>I know where you will be."<br>And shouldering suddenly his spear<br>He faded like some elfin fear,<br>Where the tall pines ran up, tier on tier<br>Tree overtoppling tree.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He shouldered his spear at morning<br>And laughed to lay it on,<br>But he leaned on his spear as on a staff,<br>With might and little mood to laugh,<br>Or ever he sighted chick or calf<br>Of Colan of Caerleon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the man dwelt in a lost land<br>Of boulders and broken men,<br>In a great grey cave far off to the south<br>Where a thick green forest stopped the mouth,<br>Giving darkness in his den.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the man was come like a shadow,<br>From the shadow of Druid trees,<br>Where Usk, with mighty murmurings,<br>Past Caerleon of the fallen kings,<br>Goes out to ghostly seas.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Last of a race in ruin--<br>He spoke the speech of the Gaels;<br>His kin were in holy Ireland,<br>Or up in the crags of Wales.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But his soul stood with his mother's folk,<br>That were of the rain-wrapped isle,<br>Where Patrick and Brandan westerly<br>Looked out at last on a landless sea<br>And the sun's last smile.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His harp was carved and cunning,<br>As the Celtic craftsman makes,<br>Graven all over with twisting shapes<br>Like many headless snakes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His harp was carved and cunning,<br>His sword prompt and sharp,<br>And he was gay when he held the sword,<br>Sad when he held the harp.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the great Gaels of Ireland<br>Are the men that God made mad,<br>For all their wars are merry,<br>And all their songs are sad.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He kept the Roman order,<br>He made the Christian sign;<br>But his eyes grew often blind and bright,<br>And the sea that rose in the rocks at night<br>Rose to his head like wine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He made the sign of the cross of God,<br>He knew the Roman prayer,<br>But he had unreason in his heart<br>Because of the gods that were.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even they that walked on the high cliffs,<br>High as the clouds were then,<br>Gods of unbearable beauty,<br>That broke the hearts of men.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And whether in seat or saddle,<br>Whether with frown or smile,<br>Whether at feast or fight was he,<br>He heard the noise of a nameless sea<br>On an undiscovered isle.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lifting the great green ivy<br>And the great spear lowering,<br>One said, "I am Alfred of Wessex,<br>And I am a conquered king."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the man of the cave made answer,<br>And his eyes were stars of scorn,<br>"And better kings were conquered<br>Or ever your sires were born.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"What goddess was your mother,<br>What fay your breed begot,<br>That you should not die with Uther<br>And Arthur and Lancelot?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"But when you win you brag and blow,<br>And when you lose you rail,<br>Army of eastland yokels<br>Not strong enough to fail."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"I bring not boast or railing,"<br>Spake Alfred not in ire,<br>"I bring of Our Lady a lesson set,<br>This--that the sky grows darker yet<br>And the sea rises higher."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then Colan of the Sacred Tree<br>Tossed his black mane on high,<br>And cried, as rigidly he rose,<br>"And if the sea and sky be foes,<br>We will tame the sea and sky."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Smiled Alfred, "Seek ye a fable<br>More dizzy and more dread<br>Than all your mad barbarian tales<br>Where the sky stands on its head ?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"A tale where a man looks down on the sky<br>That has long looked down on him;<br>A tale where a man can swallow a sea<br>That might swallow the seraphim.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Bring to the hut by Egbert's Stone<br>All bills and bows ye have."<br>And Alfred strode off rapidly,<br>And Colan of the Sacred Tree<br>Went slowly to his cave.</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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