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 she answers:
"'I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?'"
Stirred by this message, Alfred sets out yet again to stir zeal in his chiefs for the causeless cause.
"Up across windy wastes and up
Went Alfred over the shaws,
Shaken of the joy of giants,
The joy without a cause....
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."
We are first given a picture of Eldred's farm fallen awry, "Like an old cripple's bones," with its purple thistles bursting up between the kitchen stones. But Eldred, the red-faced, bulky tun is sick of fighting.
"'Come not to me, King Alfred,
Save always for the ale....
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.'"