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    The Ballad of the White Horse
    The Ballad of the White Horse
    The Ballad of the White Horse
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    The Ballad of the White Horse

    By G.K Chesterton

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    About this ebook

    British writer G.K. Chesterton was an irrepressible jack-of-all-trades when it came to literature, producing popular works in virtually every genre. The Ballad of the White Horse is an epic poem detailing the triumphs and travails of Saxon King Alfred the Great. It is said that Chesterton spent more time on this poem than any other work, and some critics regard it as his finest poetic accomplishment.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJH
    Release dateApr 1, 2019
    ISBN9788832584318
    Author

    G.K Chesterton

    G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was a prolific English journalist and author best known for his mystery series featuring the priest-detective Father Brown and for the metaphysical thriller The Man Who Was Thursday. Baptized into the Church of England, Chesterton underwent a crisis of faith as a young man and became fascinated with the occult. He eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and published some of Christianity’s most influential apologetics, including Heretics and Orthodoxy. 

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      Book preview

      The Ballad of the White Horse - G.K Chesterton

      The Ballad of the White Horse

      G. K. Chesterton

      .

      DEDICATION

                Of great limbs gone to chaos,

                A great face turned to night—

                Why bend above a shapeless shroud

                Seeking in such archaic cloud

                Sight of strong lords and light?

                Where seven sunken Englands

                Lie buried one by one,

                Why should one idle spade, I wonder,

                Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder

                To smoke and choke the sun?

                In cloud of clay so cast to heaven

                What shape shall man discern?

                These lords may light the mystery

                Of mastery or victory,

                And these ride high in history,

                But these shall not return.

                Gored on the Norman gonfalon

                The Golden Dragon died:

                We shall not wake with ballad strings

                The good time of the smaller things,

                We shall not see the holy kings

                Ride down by Severn side.

                Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured

                As the broidery of Bayeux

                The England of that dawn remains,

                And this of Alfred and the Danes

                Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns

                Too English to be true.

                Of a good king on an island

                That ruled once on a time;

                And as he walked by an apple tree

                There came green devils out of the sea

                With sea-plants trailing heavily

                And tracks of opal slime.

                Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;

                His days as our days ran,

                He also looked forth for an hour

                On peopled plains and skies that lower,

                From those few windows in the tower

                That is the head of a man.

                But who shall look from Alfred's hood

                Or breathe his breath alive?

                His century like a small dark cloud

                Drifts far; it is an eyeless crowd,

                Where the tortured trumpets scream aloud

                And the dense arrows drive.

                Lady, by one light only

                We look from Alfred's eyes,

                We know he saw athwart the wreck

                The sign that hangs about your neck,

                Where One more than Melchizedek

                Is dead and never dies.

                Therefore I bring these rhymes to you

                Who brought the cross to me,

                Since on you flaming without flaw

                I saw the sign that Guthrum saw

                When he let break his ships of awe,

                And laid peace on the sea.

                Do you remember when we went

                Under a dragon moon,

                And 'mid volcanic tints of night

                Walked where they fought the unknown fight

                And saw black trees on the battle-height,

                Black thorn on Ethandune?

                And I thought, "I will go with you,

                As man with God has gone,

                And wander with a wandering star,

                The wandering heart of things that are,

                The fiery cross of love and war

                That like yourself, goes on."

                O go you onward; where you are

                Shall honour and laughter be,

                Past purpled forest and pearled foam,

                God's winged pavilion free to roam,

                Your face, that is a wandering home,

                A flying home for me.

                Ride through the silent earthquake lands,

                Wide as a waste is wide,

                Across these days like deserts, when

                Pride and a little scratching pen

                Have dried and split the hearts of men,

                Heart of the heroes, ride.

                Up through an empty house of stars,

                Being what heart you are,

                Up the inhuman steeps of space

                As on a staircase go in grace,

                Carrying the firelight on your face

                Beyond the loneliest star.

                Take these; in memory of the hour

                We strayed a space from home

                And saw the smoke-hued hamlets, quaint

                With Westland king and Westland saint,

                And watched the western glory faint

                Along the road to Frome.

      BOOK I. THE VISION OF THE KING

                Before the gods that made the gods

                Had seen their sunrise pass,

                The White Horse of the White Horse Vale

                Was cut out of the grass.

                Before the gods that made the gods

                Had drunk at dawn their fill,

                The White Horse of the White Horse Vale

                Was hoary on the hill.

                Age beyond age on British land,

                Aeons on aeons gone,

                Was peace and war in western hills,

                And the White Horse looked on.

                For the White Horse knew England

                When there was none to know;

                He saw the first oar break or bend,

                He saw heaven fall and the world end,

                O God, how long ago.

                For the end of the world was long ago,

                And all we dwell to-day

                As children of some second birth,

                Like a strange people left on earth

                After a judgment day.

                For the end of the world was long ago,

                When the ends of the world waxed free,

                When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,

                And the sun drowned in the sea.

                When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky

                And whoso hearkened right

                Could only hear the plunging

                Of the nations in the night.

                When the ends of the earth came marching in

                To torch and cresset gleam.

                And the roads of the world that lead to Rome

                Were filled with faces that moved like foam,

                Like faces in a dream.

                And men rode out of the eastern lands,

                Broad river and burning plain;

                Trees that are Titan flowers

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