THE RIDING TO LITHEND

TO EDWARD THOMAS

HERE in the North we speak of you,
And dream (and wish the dream were true)
That when the evening has grown late
You will appear outside our gate—
As though some Gipsy-Scholar yet
Sought this far place that men forget;
Or some tall hero still unknown,
Out of the Mabinogion,
Were seen at nightfall looking in,
Passing mysteriously to win
His earlier earth, his ancient mind,
Where man was true and life more kind
Lived with the mountains and the trees
And other steadfast presences,
Where large and simple passions gave
The insight and the peace we crave,
And he no more had nigh forgot
The old high battles he had fought.
Ah, pause to-night outside our gate
And enter ere it is too late
To see the garden's deep on deep
And talk a little ere we sleep.
When you were here a year ago
I told you of a glorious woe,
The ancient woe of Gunnar dead
And its proud train of men long sped,
Fit brothers to your noble thoughts;
Then, as their shouts and Gunnar's shouts
Went down once more undyingly
And the fierce saga was put by,
I told you of my old desire
To light again that bygone fire,
To body Hallgerd's ruinous
Great hair and wrangling mouth for us,
And hear her voice deny again
That hair to Gunnar in his pain.
Because your heart could understand
The hopes of their primeval land,
The hearts of dim heroic forms
Made clear by tenderness and storms,
You caught my glow and urged me on;
So now the tale is once more done
I turn to you, I bring my play,
Longing, O friend, to hear you say
I have not dwarfed those olden things
Nor tarnisht by my furbishings.
I bring my play, I turn to you
And wish it might to-night be true
That you would seek this old small house
Twixt laurel boughs and apple boughs;
Then I would give it, bravely manned,
To you, and with my play my hand.

30 June 1908.

I. M.
2nd Lieut. Philip Edward Thomas
244th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery;
killed at a forward observation post in the
battle of Arras, on Easter Monday,
April 9th, 1917.

PERSONS:

Gunnar Hamundsson.
Hallgerd Longcoat, his wife.
Rannveig, his mother.
Oddny, Astrid, and Steinvor, Hallgerd's house-women.
Ormild, a woman thrall.
Biartey, Jofrid, and Gudfinn, beggar-women.
Gizur The White, Mord Valgardsson, Thorgrim The Easterling, Thorbrand Thorleiksson and Asbrand his brother, Aunund, Thorgeir and Hroald, riders.
Many other Riders and voices of Riders

In Iceland, a.d. 990.