文档介绍：THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE
THE BALLAD OF THE
WHITE HORSE
. Chesterton
1
THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE
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