The Ballad of the White Horse. Gilbert Keith Chesterton

A Christless chivalry:

                Who knew not of the arch or pen,

                Great, beautiful half-witted men

                From the sunrise and the sea.

                Misshapen ships stood on the deep

                Full of strange gold and fire,

                And hairy men, as huge as sin

                With horned heads, came wading in

                Through the long, low sea-mire.

                Our towns were shaken of tall kings

                With scarlet beards like blood:

                The world turned empty where they trod,

                They took the kindly cross of God

                And cut it up for wood.

                Their souls were drifting as the sea,

                And all good towns and lands

                They only saw with heavy eyes,

                And broke with heavy hands,

                Their gods were sadder than the sea,

                Gods of a wandering will,

                Who cried for blood like beasts at night,

                Sadly, from hill to hill.

                They seemed as trees walking the earth,

                As witless and as tall,

                Yet they took hold upon the heavens

                And no help came at all.

                They bred like birds in English woods,

                They rooted like the rose,

                When Alfred came to Athelney

                To hide him from their bows

                There was not English armour left,

                Nor any English thing,

                When Alfred came to Athelney

                To be an English king.

                For earthquake swallowing earthquake

                Uprent the Wessex tree;

                The whirlpool of the pagan sway

                Had swirled his sires as sticks away

                When a flood smites the sea.

                And the great kings of Wessex

                Wearied and sank in gore,

                And even their ghosts in that great stress

                Grew greyer and greyer, less and less,

                With the lords that died in Lyonesse

                And the king that comes no more.

                And the God of the Golden Dragon

                Was dumb upon his throne,

                And the lord of the Golden Dragon

                Ran in the woods alone.

                And if ever he climbed the crest of luck

                And set the flag before,

                Returning as a wheel returns,

                Came ruin and the rain that burns,

                And all began once more.

                And naught was left King Alfred

                But shameful tears of rage,

                In the island in the river

                In the end of all his age.

                In the island in the river

                He was broken to his knee:

                And he read, writ with an iron pen,

                That God had wearied of Wessex men

                And given their country, field and fen,

                To the devils of the sea.

                And he saw in a little picture,

                Tiny and far away,

                His mother sitting in Egbert's hall,

                And a book she showed him, very small,

                Where a sapphire Mary sat in stall

                With a golden Christ at play.

                It was wrought in the monk's slow manner,

                From silver and sanguine shell,

                Where the scenes are little and terrible,

                Keyholes of heaven and hell.

                In the river island of Athelney,

                With the river running past,

                In colours of such simple creed

                All things sprang at him, sun and weed,

                Till the grass grew to be grass indeed

                And the tree was a tree at last.

                Fearfully plain the flowers grew,

                Like the child's book to read,

                Or like a friend's face seen in a glass;

                He looked; and there Our Lady was,

                She stood and stroked the tall live grass

                As a man strokes his steed.

                Her face was like an open word

                When brave men speak and choose,

                The very colours of her coat

                Were better than good news.

                She spoke not, nor turned not,

                Nor any sign she cast,

                Only she stood up straight and free,

                Between the flowers in Athelney,