LITMIR.BIZ

                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 Colan 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 signed 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,

                Turning 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 grey tribes on Usk.

                He saw gigantic tracks of death

                And many a shape of doom,

                Good steadings to grey ashes gone

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