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,
          And the river running past.

          One dim ancestral jewel hung
          On his ruined armour grey,
          He rent and cast it at her feet:
          Where, after centuries, with slow feet,
          Men came from hall and school and street
          And found it where it lay.

          "Mother of God," the wanderer said,
          "I am but a common king,
          Nor will I ask what saints may ask,
          To see a secret thing.

          "The gates of heaven are fearful gates
          Worse than the gates of hell;
          Not I would break the splendours barred
          Or seek to know the thing they guard,
          Which is too good to tell.

          "But for this earth most pitiful,
          This little land I know,
          If that which is for ever is,
          Or if our hearts shall break with bliss,
          Seeing the stranger go?

          "When our last bow is broken, Queen,
          And our last javelin cast,
          Under some sad, green evening sky,
          Holding a ruined cross on high,
          Under warm westland grass to lie,
          Shall we come home at last?"

          And a voice came human but high up,
          Like a cottage climbed among
          The clouds; or a serf of hut and croft
          That sits by his hovel fire as oft,
          But hears on his old bare roof aloft
          A belfry burst in song.

          "The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
          We do not guard our gain,
          The heaviest hind may easily
          Come silently and suddenly
          Upon me in a lane.

          "And any little maid that walks
          In good thoughts apart,
          May break the guard of the Three Kings
          And see the dear and dreadful things
          I hid within my heart.

          "The meanest man in grey fields gone
          Behind the set of sun,
          Heareth between star and other star,
          Through the door of the darkness fallen ajar,
          The council, eldest of things that are,
          The talk of the Three in One.

          "The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
          We do not guard our gold,
          Men may uproot where worlds begin,
          Or read the name of the nameless sin;
          But if he fail or if he win
          To no good man is told.

          "The men of the East may spell the stars,
          And times and triumphs mark,
          But the men signed of the cross of Christ
          Go gaily in