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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117663" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book IV: The Woman in the Forest</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thick thunder of the snorting swine,<br>Enormous in the gloam,<br>Rending among all roots that cling,<br>And the wild horses whinnying,<br>Were the night's noises when the King<br>Shouldering his harp, went home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With eyes of owl and feet of fox,<br>Full of all thoughts he went;<br>He marked the tilt of the pagan camp,<br>The paling of pine, the sentries' tramp,<br>And the one great stolen altar-lamp<br>Over Guthrum in his tent.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By scrub and thorn in Ethandune<br>That night the foe had lain;<br>Whence ran across the heather grey<br>The old stones of a Roman way;<br>And in a wood not far away<br>The pale road split in twain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He marked the wood and the cloven ways<br>With an old captain's eyes,<br>And he thought how many a time had he<br>Sought to see Doom he could not see;<br>How ruin had come and victory,<br>And both were a surprise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even so he had watched and wondered<br>Under Ashdown from the plains;<br>With Ethelred praying in his tent,<br>Till the white hawthorn swung and bent,<br>As Alfred rushed his spears and rent<br>The shield-wall of the Danes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even so he had watched and wondered,<br>Knowing neither less nor more,<br>Till all his lords lay dying,<br>And axes on axes plying,<br>Flung him, and drove him flying<br>Like a pirate to the shore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wise he had been before defeat,<br>And wise before success;<br>Wise in both hours and ignorant,<br>Knowing neither more nor less.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As he went down to the river-hut<br>He knew a night-shade scent,<br>Owls did as evil cherubs rise,<br>With little wings and lantern eyes,<br>As though he sank through the under-skies;<br>But down and down he went.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As he went down to the river-hut<br>He went as one that fell;<br>Seeing the high forest domes and spars.<br>Dim green or torn with golden scars,<br>As the proud look up at the evil stars,<br>In the red heavens of hell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For he must meet by the river-hut<br>Them he had bidden to arm,<br>Mark from the towers of Italy,<br>And Colan of the Sacred Tree,<br>And Eldred who beside the sea<br>Held heavily his farm.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The roof leaned gaping to the grass,<br>As a monstrous mushroom lies;<br>Echoing and empty seemed the place;<br>But opened in a little space<br>A great grey woman with scarred face<br>And strong and humbled eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">King Alfred was but a meagre man,<br>Bright eyed, but lean and pale:<br>And swordless, with his harp and rags,<br>He seemed a beggar, such as lags<br>Looking for crusts and ale.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the woman, with a woman's eyes<br>Of pity at once and ire,<br>Said, when that she had glared a span,<br>"There is a cake for any man<br>If he will watch the fire."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And Alfred, bowing heavily,<br>Sat down the fire to stir,<br>And even as the woman pitied him<br>So did he pity her.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Saying, "O great heart in the night,<br>O best cast forth for worst,<br>Twilight shall melt and morning stir,<br>And no kind thing shall come to her,<br>Till God shall turn the world over<br>And all the last are first.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"And well may God with the serving-folk<br>Cast in His dreadful lot;<br>Is not He too a servant,<br>And is not He forgot ?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"For was not God my gardener<br>And silent like a slave;<br>That opened oaks on the uplands<br>Or thicket in graveyard gave?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"And was not God my armourer,<br>All patient and unpaid,<br>That sealed my skull as a helmet,<br>And ribs for hauberk made?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Did not a great grey servant<br>Of all my sires and me,<br>Build this pavilion of the pines,<br>And herd the fowls and fill the vines,<br>And labour and pass and leave no signs<br>Save mercy and mystery?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"For God is a great servant,<br>And rose before the day,<br>From some primordial slumber torn;<br>But all we living later born<br>Sleep on, and rise after the morn,<br>And the Lord has gone away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"On things half sprung from sleeping,<br>All sleepy suns have shone,<br>They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees,<br>The beasts blink upon hands and knees,<br>Man is awake and does and sees--<br>But Heaven has done and gone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For who shall guess the good riddle<br>Or speak of the Holiest,<br>Save in faint figures and failing words,<br>Who loves, yet laughs among the swords,<br>Labours, and is at rest?<br>"But some see God like Guthrum,<br>Crowned, with a great beard curled,<br>But I see God like a good giant,<br>That, labouring, lifts the world.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Wherefore was God in Golgotha,<br>Slain as a serf is slain;<br>And hate He had of prince and peer,<br>And love He had and made good cheer,<br>Of them that, like this woman here,<br>Go powerfully in pain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"But in this grey morn of man's life,<br>Cometh sometime to the mind<br>A little light that leaps and flies,<br>Like a star blown on the wind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"A star of nowhere, a nameless star,<br>A light that spins and swirls,<br>And cries that even in hedge and hill,<br>Even on earth, it may go ill<br>At last with the evil earls.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"A dancing sparkle, a doubtful star,<br>On the waste wind whirled and driven;<br>But it seems to sing of a wilder worth,<br>A time discrowned of doom and birth,<br>And the kingdom of the poor on earth<br>Come, as it is in heaven.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"But even though such days endure,<br>How shall it profit her?<br>Who shall go groaning to the grave,<br>With many a meek and mighty slave,<br>Field-breaker and fisher on the wave,<br>And woodman and waggoner.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Bake ye the big world all again<br>A cake with kinder leaven;<br>Yet these are sorry evermore--<br>Unless there be a little door,<br>A little door in heaven."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And as he wept for the woman<br>He let her business be,<br>And like his royal oath and rash<br>The good food fell upon the ash<br>And blackened instantly.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Screaming, the woman caught a cake<br>Yet burning from the bar,<br>And struck him suddenly on the face,<br>Leaving a scarlet scar.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">King Alfred stood up wordless,<br>A man dead with surprise,<br>And torture stood and the evil things<br>That are in the childish hearts of kings<br>An instant in his eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And even as he stood and stared<br>Drew round him in the dusk<br>Those friends creeping from far-off farms,<br>Marcus with all his slaves in arms,<br>And the strange spears hung with ancient charms<br>Of Colan of the Usk.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With one whole farm marching afoot<br>The trampled road resounds,<br>Farm-hands and farm-beasts blundering by<br>And jars of mead and stores of rye,<br>Where Eldred strode above his high<br>And thunder-throated hounds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And grey cattle and silver lowed<br>Against the unlifted morn,<br>And straw clung to the spear-shafts tall.<br>And a boy went before them all<br>Blowing a ram's horn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As mocking such rude revelry,<br>The dim clan of the Gael<br>Came like a bad king's burial-end,<br>With dismal robes that drop and rend<br>And demon pipes that wail--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In long, outlandish garments,<br>Torn, though of antique worth,<br>With Druid beards and Druid spears,<br>As a resurrected race appears<br>Out of an elder earth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And though the King had called them forth<br>And knew them for his own,<br>So still each eye stood like a gem,<br>So spectral hung each broidered hem,<br>Grey carven men he fancied them,<br>Hewn in an age of stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the two wild peoples of the north<br>Stood fronting in the gloam,<br>And heard and knew each in its mind<br>The third great thunder on the wind,<br>The living walls that hedge mankind,<br>The walking walls of Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Mark's were the mixed tribes of the west,<br>Of many a hue and strain,<br>Gurth, with rank hair like yellow grass,<br>And the Cornish fisher, Gorlias,<br>And Halmer, come from his first mass,<br>Lately baptized, a Dane.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But like one man in armour<br>Those hundreds trod the field,<br>From red Arabia to the Tyne<br>The earth had heard that marching-line,<br>Since the cry on the hill Capitoline,<br>And the fall of the golden shield.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the earth shook and the King stood still<br>Under the greenwood bough,<br>And the smoking cake lay at his feet<br>And the blow was on his brow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then Alfred laughed out suddenly,<br>Like thunder in the spring,<br>Till shook aloud the lintel-beams,<br>And the squirrels stirred in dusty dreams,<br>And the startled birds went up in streams,<br>For the laughter of the King.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the beasts of the earth and the birds looked down,<br>In a wild solemnity,<br>On a stranger sight than a sylph or elf,<br>On one man laughing at himself<br>Under the greenwood tree--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The giant laughter of Christian men<br>That roars through a thousand tales,<br>Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass,<br>And Jack's away with his master's lass,<br>And the miser is banged with all his brass,<br>The farmer with all his flails;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tales that tumble and tales that trick,<br>Yet end not all in scorning--<br>Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,<br>And the clock gone wrong and the world gone right,<br>That the mummers sing upon Christmas night<br>And Christmas Day in the morning.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Now here is a good warrant,"<br>Cried Alfred, "by my sword;<br>For he that is struck for an ill servant<br>Should be a kind lord.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"He that has been a servant<br>Knows more than priests and kings,<br>But he that has been an ill servant,<br>He knows all earthly things.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Pride flings frail palaces at the sky,<br>As a man flings up sand,<br>But the firm feet of humility<br>Take hold of heavy land.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Pride juggles with her toppling towers,<br>They strike the sun and cease,<br>But the firm feet of humility<br>They grip the ground like trees.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"He that hath failed in a little thing<br>Hath a sign upon the brow;<br>And the Earls of the Great Army<br>Have no such seal to show.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"The red print on my forehead,<br>Small flame for a red star,<br>In the van of the violent marching, then<br>When the sky is torn of the trumpets ten,<br>And the hands of the happy howling men<br>Fling wide the gates of war.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"This blow that I return not<br>Ten times will I return<br>On kings and earls of all degree,<br>And armies wide as empires be<br>Shall slide like landslips to the sea<br>If the red star burn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"One man shall drive a hundred,<br>As the dead kings drave;<br>Before me rocking hosts be riven,<br>And battering cohorts backwards driven,<br>For I am the first king known of Heaven<br>That has been struck like a slave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Up on the old white road, brothers,<br>Up on the Roman walls!<br>For this is the night of the drawing of swords,<br>And the tainted tower of the heathen hordes<br>Leans to our hammers, fires and cords,<br>Leans a little and falls.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Follow the star that lives and leaps,<br>Follow the sword that sings,<br>For we go gathering heathen men,<br>A terrible harvest, ten by ten,<br>As the wrath of the last red autumn--then<br>When Christ reaps down the kings.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Follow a light that leaps and spins,<br>Follow the fire unfurled!<br>For riseth up against realm and rod,<br>A thing forgotten, a thing downtrod,<br>The last lost giant, even God,<br>Is risen against the world."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Roaring they went o'er the Roman wall,<br>And roaring up the lane,<br>Their torches tossed a ladder of fire,<br>Higher their hymn was heard and higher,<br>More sweet for hate and for heart's desire,<br>And up in the northern scrub and brier,<br>They fell upon the Dane.</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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