University of Virginia Library

KING ALFRED

Alfred the Great, in his Palace at Winchester, drawing near to his last days, talks with Asser the Welshman.
ALFRED
Asser, good bishop and well-proven friend,
Thou find'st me changed and stricken low by mine
Infirmities; not much of warrior left;
Here feebly sitting, pierced with many nails
Of pain. And in my flesh there is a voice
That telleth me my days henceforth are few.

ASSER
Thou art not old.

ALFRED
No son of Ethelwulf
Grows old. Nor have I held it to be aught
A King should murmur at, if life burn down
Untimely, whether amid toilful peace
Or shaken with the blast and peal of war.
But to go hence, unsure if what I wrought
And moulded be more lasting than the abode
Yon swallow builds, out of a little clay,
And lines with feathers!

ASSER
King, thou hast set good trees
In a good soil, where now with fruit they bless
Thy planting—

ALFRED
And anon there shall return
The Northern storm that I have stayed awhile,
And shatter my young woods, ev'n as the old.

ASSER
Think not so ill of ages yet to be!
The wicked may again wax proud, but men's
Devices stand not, against God's resolves;
And that which He hath helped the just to build,
Surely He will not help the unjust to raze.
Leave now to Him the Shall-be: the Hath-been,
Behold it comely to look back upon—
A tale of enemies mightily withstood,
And dangers greatly wrestled with and thrown;
A tale told at the hearth on winter eves,
And dear to earl and churl and thane and thrall
For ever.

ALFRED
Friend, I thank thee for thy word.
It may be that my thoughts are not more hale
Than this worn body. And most unmeet it were,
If I, that have from God riches and power,
Gave not at last, unto my Over-King,
Aught but a joyless heart. Nay, go not yet.
Here sit thou, where this window looketh out
Upon the quiet world in which I end,
Who lacked not stir of camps and din of arms.
Yonder my city twinkles in the sun,
Beneath the down: ev'n she whom those dim minds
In shining mail, the heathen Kings, did lay
In ashes,—there she riseth, and the light
Gildeth her towers. And here we have sat—how oft!—
And talked of happy or of woful things
That have befall'n my people.

ASSER
But to-day,
Shall we not rather count the woful things
As tares and darnel sown among the wheat,—
Nay, as the ills that being outlived are good,—
And talk henceforth of happy things alone?
Such as that famous pleasantry of thine,
When Hasting with his ships lay in the Lea,
And thou did'st lure the stream out of his course—

ALFRED
Out of his ancient bed!

ASSER
His well-loved bed!

ALFRED
And brought him through strange byways to the Thames—

ASSER
And left the Northman's navy high and dry.

ALFRED
Yea, bishop, 'twas a goodly jest. But Thought
Needeth no spur to bid him carry me
Far unto rearward of the time whereof
Thou speakest; and when sleep is rife with dreams,
Oft in old warfare am I tossed anew.
Then shapes come wandering from my battlefields,
And ruthless Kings sail out of Heathendom,
Whose keels were the swift ploughshares of the sea,
Who tilled not earth, save with the harrow of war.
Again the Dane meets me in truce, again
Swears on his arms, and on the holy ring
Makes covenant, pledging him to go in peace
From out my realm that he so sore had bruised,
And I again am fooled and he forsworn.
And now I lurk in thickets, fade from sight
In the rank steaming marsh, am lost to men
Amid the tusks and antlers of the brake,
A hunted hunter, nameless, on the isle
Of hiding; and there cometh thither,—borne,
It well might seem, on some lone heron's wing,—
Word of the gladsome slaying of Ubba, amidst
His hungry sea-wolves, nigh the hungry sea
That clangs on northern Devon; and there falls
Into our hands that thing of sorcery, made
In likeness of their fabled Odin's bird,
The Raven War-flag, woven to the sound
Of old enchantments in one Christless noon
By the three daughters born to Lodbrok, him
Of thrice dread name and doom, whom snakes devoured.
Yea, and at times, swept in a hurtling dream,
Again I smite the host at Ethandune,
And drive them flying before me to their hold,
With crash of battle-axe through scalp and skull,
And hewing of great limbs as boughs lopped off
When thunder hurls him on the cringing weald.

ASSER
Too much the memory stirs thy frame.

ALFRED
And yet
The Northman's joy in battle for battle's sake
Was never mine! Nor was I of that stuff
The tamers and subduers of the earth
Are made of. I had turned with a sick soul
From their red havoc; from things and deeds whereat
Warriors like Alexander when he trode
On Persia, boasting him begotten of Jove,—
Or Genseric—or the great Hamilcar's sons—
Or Shalmaneser and Sargon in their pride,—
Would with a smile have gazed: the sack of towns;
The spear thrust through the tender breast of babes;
And deeds I name not, but which they that sailed
Against me—as the gleeman singeth it,
Over the gannet's bath and whale's domain—
Held lighter than the moulted feather a gull
Gives to the wind, and as the things of nought
That in their sum were glory and conqueror's fame.
I ever looked beyond the sword-mown field
To other harvest. For in this my realm,
Which I but hold in fief and vassalage
From One more mighty, of more ancient throne,
A King's most King-like, most King-worthy toil
Begins, not ends, when he hath builded him
A bulwark 'gainst his foes. Then comes the task
Of rearing for his people such a house
That they within, for fiery love of it,
Shall leap as a lion if enemy threat their door.
And being athirst to see this realm of mine,
This house and mansion that my hands have reared,
Full of fair things, I sent to richer lands
For what mine own was poor in, bearing thence
Much honourable booty, and chief of all,
Their wisdom, as set forth in script and scroll;
With divers other noble spoils of peace.
For I did grieve to think how these rough coasts,
That all too often have let in the foe,
Should be so apt at keeping out the friend,
Him that hath gifts for us, right worthy word
And highborn thought; or skill to raise aloft
Minsters that usher into heaven the mind;
Or music, of such sort that while it peals
In a man's breast, no baseness there can live.
And greatly had it pleased me to have seen
My people hotter in the love of song,
And of that sweetest craft of song-making;
For they are come of them that dearly prized
The word of the skilled makers, those old chants
Our pagan fathers graved in runes, on what
They in their darkness held the sacred beech.
Perhaps another age shall more abound
In song-fruit, when perhaps another King
Shall have less lust of it than I. Howbeit,
I leave my people not unfed in mind,
Whom pinched I found, and lean; and I bequeath
A land healed of her wounds: where pillage was,
Is tillage, and the fruit is sweet, the flower
Is fair. But pray thou that there come not back
The trampler of my orchard and my field,
To fill the wheel-tracks of his wain with blood.

ASSER
King, in my land, beyond the Severn sea,
They tell of one, a soothsayer, that lived,
As I conceive, betwixt that time when Rome
Called hence the legions, and the days when sat
Theodoric at Ravenna with his Goths;
And of this sage, or wizard, whom they name
Merlin, 'tis written that he prophesied
Of thee—“The north wind shall against him rise,
And blight his flowers, the west wind's fosterlings.”
The dark word was fulfilled: the north wind came
And snatched away thy blooms. Now is he stayed;
Now hast thou set a bound to the north wind.
Comfort thee, then, and be of a glad heart,
For He is on thy side who was of old
On Hezekiah's, when Sennacherib's host
With thunder of chariots was come up against
Judah, and by the mouth of Amoz' son
The Lord spake, saying, “I will put My hook
In his nostrils, and My bridle in his lips,
And I will turn him back by the way he came.”

[A minstrel is heard singing.]
ALFRED
There, Asser, sang the sword. Nor is it for me,
Who all my life have known no peace but such
As ever listens for the step of war,
To call that voice unholy. Hatred, too,
And rage, are paths God leads us by, to ends
We understand not. . . . But the day burns low,
And the light fadeth upon turret and spire.
Bidest thou here to-morrow?

ASSER
I depart
To Sherborne, thy fair town that climbs about
Its minster, where my pastoral staff now lacks
The shepherd. There thy brother Ethelbert
Awaiteth resurrection with the just.

ALFRED
There, also, lieth another of my house—

ASSER
Less worthy to have been of Egbert's seed.

ALFRED
His sins were great; but let him rest in peace . . .
It may be we shall talk not here again.

ASSER
It may be. For the time is not far off—
Wherefore should I dissemble at this hour?—
When from the prison of the body thou
Shalt be delivered; and shalt give to earth
That which from earth thou hadst; and yield to God
That which thou hadst indeed from God alone.

ALFRED
[A strange light suffuses the chamber. Alfred sinks on his knees.]