Читать книгу The Ballad of the White Horse - Гилберт Честертон, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Лорд Дансени - Страница 2

          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.