The Ballad of the White Horse/Book Ⅱ

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Layout 2

THE GATHERING OF THE CHIEFS

Up over windy wastes and up
 Went Alfred over the shaws,
Shaken of the joy of giants,
 The joy without a cause.

In the slopes away to the western bays,
 Where blows not ever a tree,
He washed his soul in the west wind
 And his body in the sea.

And he set to rhyme his ale-measures
 And he sang aloud his laws;
Because of the joy of the giants,
 The joy without a cause.

For the King went gathering Wessex men
 As grain out of the chaff;
The few that were alive to die,
Laughing, as littered skulls that lie
After lost battles turn to the sky
 An everlasting laugh.

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 Golan 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 sighed 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,
And turned 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 gray towns 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 Cæsar 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 the White Horse wold
And the Thames bank to Owsenfold
If Wessex goes to war.

"Guthrum sits strong on either bank,
 And you must press his lines
Inwards, and eastward drive him down;
I doubt if you shall take the crown
Till you have taken London town,
 For me, I have the vines."

"If each man on the Judgment Day
 Meet God on a plain alone,"
Said Alfred, "I will speak for you
As for myself, and call it true
That you brought all fighting folk you knew,
 Lined under Egbert's Stone.

"Though I be in the dust ere then
 I know where you will be."
And, shouldering suddenly his spear,
He faded like some elfin fear,
Where the tall pines ran up, tier on tier,
 Tree over toppling tree.

He shouldered his spear at morning,
 And laughed to lay it on,
But he leaned on his spear as on a staff,
With might and little mood to laugh,
Or ever he sighted chick or calf
 Of Colan of Caerleon.

For the man dwelt in a lost land.
 Of boulders and broken men,
In a great grey cave far off to south,
Where a thick green forest stopped the mouth,
 Giving darkness in his den.

And the man was come like a shadow
 From the shadow of Druid trees,
Where Usk, with mighty murmurings,
Past Caerleon of the fallen kings,
 Goes out to ghostly seas.

Last of a race in ruin —
 He spoke the speech of the Gaels;
His kin were in holy Ireland
 Or up in the crags of Wales.

But his soul stood with his mother's folk,
 That were of the rain-wrapped isle
Where Patrick and Brandan westerly
Looked out at last on a landless sea
 And the sun's last smile.

His harp was carved and cunning
 As the Celtic craftsman makes,
Graven all over with twisting shapes
 Like many headless snakes.

His harp was carved and cunning,
 His sword prompt and sharp,
And he was gay when he held the sword,
 Sad when he held the harp.

For the great Gaels of Ireland
 Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wards are merry
 And all their songs are sad.

He kept the Roman order;
 He made the Christian sign;
But his eyes grew often blind and bright,
And the sea that rose in the rocks at night
 Rose to his head like wine.

He made the sign of the cross of God,
 He knew the Roman prayer;
But he had unreason in his heart
 Because of the gods that were.

Even they that walked on the high cliffs,
 High as the clouds were then,
Gods of unbearable beauty
 That broke the hearts of men.

And whether in seat or saddle,
 Whether with frown or smile,
Whether at feast or fight was he,
He heard the noise of a nameless sea
 On an undiscovered isle.

Lifting the great green ivy,
 And the great spear lowering,
One said, "I am Alfred of Wessex,
 And I am a conquered king."

And the man of the cave made answer,
 And his eyes were stars of scorn,
"And better kings were conquered
 Or ever your sires were born.

"What goddess was your mother,
 What fay your breed begot,
That you should not die with Uther
 And Arthur and Lancelot?

"But when you win you brag and blow,
 And when you lose you rail,
Army of eastland yokels
 Not strong enough to fail."

"I bring not boast or railing,"
 Spake Alfred, not in ire;
"I bring of Our Lady a lesson set,
This — that the sky grows darker yet
 And the sea rises higher."

Then Colan of the Sacred Tree
 Tossed his black mane on high,
And cried, as rigidly he rose,
"And if the sea and sky be foes
 We will tame the sea and sky."

Smiled Alfred, "Seek ye a fable
 More dizzy and more dread
Than all your mad barbarian tales,
 Where the sky stands on its head?

"A tale where a man looks down on the sky
 That has long looked down on him;
A tale where a man can swallow a sea
 That might swallow the seraphim.

"Bring to the hut by Egbert's Stone
 All bills and bows ye have."
And Alfred strode off rapidly,
And Colan of the Sacred Tree
 Went slowly to his cave.