And he gathered the songs of simple men

  That swing with helm and hod,

  And the alms he gave as a Christian

  Like a river alive with fishes ran;

  And he made gifts to a beggar man

  As to a wandering god.

  And he gat good laws of the ancient kings,

  Like treasure out of the tombs;

  And many a thief in thorny nook,

  Or noble in sea-stained turret shook,

  For the opening of his iron book,

  And the gathering of the dooms.

  Then men would come from the ends of the earth,

  Whom the King sat welcoming,

  And men would go to the ends of the earth

  Because of the word of the King.

  For folk came in to Alfred’s face

  Whose javelins had been hurled

  On monsters that make boil the sea,

  Crakens and coils of mystery.

  Or thrust in ancient snows that be

  The white hair of the world.

  And some had knocked at the northern gates

  Of the ultimate icy floor,

  Where the fish freeze and the foam turns black,

  And the wide world narrows to a track,

  And the other sea at the world’s back

  Cries through a closed door.

  And men went forth from Alfred’s face,

  Even great gift-bearing lords,

  Not to Rome only, but more bold,

  Out to the high hot courts of old,

  Of negroes clad in cloth of gold,

  Silence, and crooked swords,

  Scrawled screens and secret gardens

  And insect-laden skies —

  Where fiery plains stretch on and on

  To the purple country of Prester John

  And the walls of Paradise.

  And he knew the might of the Terre Majeure,

  Where kings began to reign;

  Where in a night-rout, without name,

  Of gloomy Goths and Gauls there came

  White, above candles all aflame,

  Like a vision, Charlemagne.

  And men, seeing such embassies,

  Spake with the King and said:

  “The steel that sang so sweet a tune

  On Ashdown and on Ethandune,

  Why hangs it scabbarded so soon,

  All heavily like lead?

  “Why dwell the Danes in North England,

  And up to the river ride?

  Three more such marches like thine own

  Would end them; and the Pict should own

  Our sway; and our feet climb the throne

  In the mountains of Strathclyde.”

  And Alfred in the orchard,

  Among apples green and red,

  With the little book in his bosom,

  Looked at green leaves and said:

  “When all philosophies shall fail,

  This word alone shall fit;

  That a sage feels too small for life,

  And a fool too large for it.

  “Asia and all imperial plains

  Are too little for a fool;

  But for one man whose eyes can see

  The little island of Athelney

  Is too large a land to rule.

  “Haply it had been better

  When I built my fortress there,

  Out in the reedy waters wide,

  I had stood on my mud wall and cried:

  ‘Take England all, from tide to tide —

  Be Athelney my share.’

  “Those madmen of the throne-scramble —

  Oppressors and oppressed —

  Had lined the banks by Athelney,

  And waved and wailed unceasingly,

  Where the river turned to the broad sea,

  By an island of the blest.

  “An island like a little book

  Full of a hundred tales,

  Like the gilt page the good monks pen,

  That is all smaller than a wren,

  Yet hath high towns, meteors, and men,

  And suns and spouting whales;

  “A land having a light on it

  In the river dark and fast,

  An isle with utter clearness lit,

  Because a saint had stood in it;

  Where flowers are flowers indeed and fit,

  And trees are trees at last.

  “So were the island of a saint;

  But I am a common king,

  And I will make my fences tough

  From Wantage Town to Plymouth Bluff,

  Because I am not wise enough

  To rule so small a thing.”

  And it fell in the days of Alfred,

  In the days of his repose,

  That as old customs in his sight

  Were a straight road and a steady light,

  He bade them keep the White Horse white

  As the first plume of the snows.

  And right to the red torchlight,

  From the trouble of morning grey,

  They stripped the White Horse of the grass

  As they strip it to this day.

  And under the red torchlight

  He went dreaming as though dull,

  Of his old companions slain like kings,

  And the rich irrevocable things

  Of a heart that hath not openings,

  But is shut fast, being full.

  And the torchlight touched the pale hair

  Where silver clouded gold,

  And the frame of his face was made of cords,

  And a young lord turned among the lords

  And said: “The King is old.”

  And even as he said it

  A post ran in amain,

  Crying: “Arm, Lord King, the hamlets arm,

  In the horror and the shade of harm,

  They have burnt Brand of Aynger’s farm —

  The Danes are come again!

  “Danes drive the white East Angles

  In six fights on the plains,

  Danes waste the world about the Thames,

  Danes to the eastward — Danes!”

  And as he stumbled on one knee,

  The thanes broke out in ire,

  Crying: “Ill the watchmen watch, and ill

  The sheriffs keep the shire.”

  But the young earl said: “Ill the saints,

  The saints of England, guard

  The land wherein we pledge them gold;

  The dykes decay, the King grows old,

  And surely this is hard,

  “That we be never quit of them;

  That when his head is hoar

  He cannot say to them he smote,

  And spared with a hand hard at the throat,

  ‘Go, and return no more.’”

  Then Alfred smiled. And the smile of him

  Was like the sun for power.

  But he only pointed: bade them heed

  Those peasants of the Berkshire breed,

  Who plucked the old Horse of the weed

  As they pluck it to this hour.

  “Will ye part with the weeds for ever?

  Or show daisies to the door?

  Or will you bid the bold grass

  Go, and return no more?

  “So ceaseless and so secret

  Thrive terror and theft set free;

  Treason and shame shall come to pass

  While one weed flowers in a morass;

  And like the stillness of stiff grass

  The stillness of tyranny.

  “Over our white souls also

  Wild heresies and high

  Wave prouder than the plumes of grass,

  And sadder than their sigh.

  “And I go riding against the raid,

  And ye know not where I am;

  But ye shall know in a day or year,

  When one green star of grass grows here;

  Chaos has charged you, charger and spear,

  Battle-axe and battering-ram.

  “And though skies alter and empires melt,

  This word shall still be true:

  If we would have the horse of old,

  Scour ye the horse anew.

  “One time I followed a dancing star

  That seemed to sing and nod,

  And ring upon earth all evil’s knell;

  But now I wot if ye scour not well

  Red rust shall grow on God’s great bell

  And grass in the streets of God.”

  Ceased Alfred; and above his head

  The grand green domes, the Downs,

  Showed the first legions of the press,

  Marching in haste and bitterness

  For Christ’s sake and the crown’s.

  Beyond the cavern of Colan,

  Past Eldred’s by the sea,

  Rose men that owned King Alfred’s rod,

  From the windy wastes of Exe untrod,

  Or where the thorn of the grave of God

  Burns over Glastonbury.

  Far northward and far westward

  The distant tribes drew nigh,

  Plains beyond plains, fell beyond fell,

  That a man at sunset sees so well,

  And the tiny coloured towns that dwell

  In the corners of the sky.

  But dark and thick as thronged the host,

  With drum and torch and blade,

  The still-eyed King sat pondering,

  As one that watches a live thing,

  The scoured chalk; and he said,

  “Though I give this land to Our Lady,

  That helped me in Athelney,

  Though lordlier trees and lustier sod

  And happier hills hath no flesh trod

  Than the garden of the Mother of God

  Between Thames side and the sea,

  “I know that weeds shall grow in it

  Faster than men can burn;

  And though they scatter now and go,

  In some far century, sad and slow,

  I have a vision, and I know

  The heathen shall return.

  “They shall not come with warships,

  They shall not waste with brands,

  But books be all their eating,

  And ink be on their hands.

  “Not with the humour of hunters

  Or savage skill in war,

  But ordering all things with dead words,

  Strings shall they make of beasts and birds,

  And wheels of wind and star.

  “They shall come mild as monkish clerks,

  With many a scroll and pen;

  And backward shall ye turn and gaze,

  Desiring one of Alfred’s days,

  When pagans still were men.

  “The dear sun dwarfed of dreadful suns,

  Like fiercer flowers on stalk,

  Earth lost and little like a pea

  In high heaven’s towering forestry,

  — These be the small weeds ye shall see

  Crawl, covering the chalk.

  “But though they bridge St. Mary’s sea,

  Or steal St. Michael’s wing —

  Though they rear marvels over us,

  Greater than great Vergilius

  Wrought for the Roman king;

  “By this sign you shall know them,

  The breaking of the sword,

  And man no more a free knight,

  That loves or hates his lord.

  “Yea, this shall be the sign of them,

  The sign of the dying fire;

  And Man made like a half-wit,

  That knows not of his sire.

  “What though they come with scroll and pen,

  And grave as a shaven clerk,

  By this sign you shall know them,

  That they ruin and make dark;

  “By all men bond to Nothing,

  Being slaves without a lord,

  By one blind idiot world obeyed,

  Too blind to be abhorred;

  “By terror and the cruel tales

  Of curse in bone and kin,

  By weird and weakness winning,

  Accursed from the beginning,

  By detail of the sinning,

  And denial of the sin;

  “By thought a crawling ruin,

  By life a leaping mire,

  By a broken heart in the breast of the world,

  And the end of the world’s desire;

  “By God and man dishonoured,

  By death and life made vain,

  Know ye the old barbarian,

  The barbarian come again —

  “When is great talk of trend and tide,

  And wisdom and destiny,

  Hail that undying heathen

  That is sadder than the sea.

  “In what wise men shall smite him,

  Or the Cross stand up again,

  Or charity or chivalry,

  My vision saith not; and I see

  No more; but now ride doubtfully

  To the battle of the plain.”

  And the grass-edge of the great down

  Was cut clean as a lawn,

  While the levies thronged from near and far,

  From the warm woods of the western star,

  And the King went out to his last war

  On a tall grey horse at dawn.

  And news of his far-off fighting

  Came slowly and brokenly

  From the land of the East Saxons,

  From the sunrise and the sea.

  From the plains of the white sunrise,

  And sad St. Edmund’s crown,

  Where the pools of Essex pale and gleam

  Out beyond London Town —

  In mighty and doubtful fragments,

  Like faint or fabled wars,

  Climbed the old hills of his renown,

  Where the bald brow of White Horse Down

  Is close to the cold stars.

  But away in the eastern places

  The wind of death walked high,

  And a raid was driven athwart the raid,

  The sky reddened and the smoke swayed,

  And the tall grey horse went by.

  The gates of the great river

  Were breached as with a barge,

  The walls sank crowded, say the scribes,

  And high towers populous with tribes

  Seemed leaning from the charge.

  Smoke like rebellious heavens rolled

  Curled over coloured flames,

  Mirrored in monstrous purple dreams

  In the mighty pools of Thames.

  Loud was the war on London wall,

  And loud in London gates,

  And loud the sea-kings in the cloud

  Broke through their dreaming gods, and loud

  Cried on their dreadful Fates.

  And all the while on White Horse Hill

  The horse lay long and wan,

  The turf crawled and the fungus crept,

  And the little sorrel, while all men slept,

  Unwrought the work of man.

  With velvet finger, velvet foot,

  The fierce soft mosses then

  Crept on the large white commonweal

  All folk had striven to strip and peel,

  And the grass, like a great green witch’s wheel,

  Unwound the toils of men.

  And clover and silent thistle throve,

  And buds burst silently,

  With little care for the Thames Valley

  Or what things there might be —

  That away on the widening river,

  In the eastern plains for crown

  Stood up in the pale purple sky

  One turret of smoke like ivory;

  And the smoke changed and the wind went by,

  And the King took London Town.

  POEMS

  CONTENTS

  THREE DEDICATIONS

  TO EDMUND CLERIHEW BENTLEY

  TO HILAIRE BELLOC

  TO M. E. W.

  WAR POEMS

  LEPANTO

  THE MARCH OF THE BLACK MOUNTAIN 1913

  BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS

  THE WIFE OF FLANDERS

  THE CRUSADER RETURNS FROM CAPTIVITY

  LOVE POEMS

  GLENCOE

  LOVE’S TRAPPIST

  CONFESSIONAL

  MUSIC

  THE DELUGE

  THE STRANGE MUSIC

  THE GREAT MINIMUM

  THE MORTAL ANSWERS

  A MARRIAGE SONG

  BAY COMBE

  RELIGIOUS POEMS

  THE WISE MEN

  THE HOUSE OF CHRISTMAS

  A SONG OF GIFTS TO GOD

  THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

  A HYMN FOR THE CHURCH MILITANT

  THE BEATIFIC VISION

  THE TRUCE OF CHRISTMAS

  A HYMN

  A CHRISTMAS SONG FOR THREE GUILDS

  THE NATIVITY

  A CHILD OF THE SNOWS

  A WORD

  RHYMES FOR THE TIMES

  ANTICHRIST, OR THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM: AN ODE

  THE REVOLUTIONIST: OR LINES TO A STATESMAN

  THE SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL

  THE HORRIBLE HISTORY OF JONES

  THE NEW FREETHINKER

  IN MEMORIAM P.D.

  SONNET WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON

  A SONG OF SWORDS

  A SONG OF DEFEAT

  SONNET

  AFRICA

  THE DEAD HERO

  AN ELECTION ECHO 1906

  THE SONG OF THE WHEELS

  THE SECRET PEOPLE

  MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

  LOST

  BALLAD OF THE SUN

  TRANSLATION FROM DU BELLAY

  THE HIGHER UNITY

  THE EARTH’S VIGIL

  ON RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION

  WHEN I CAME BACK TO FLEET STREET

  A CIDER SONG

  THE LAST HERO

  BALLADES

  BALLADE D’UNE GRANDE DAME

  A BALLADE OF AN ANTI-PURITAN

  A BALLADE OF A BOOK-REVIEWER

  A BALLADE OF SUICIDE

  A BALLADE OF THE FIRST RAIN