Gored on the Norman gonfalon The Golden Dragon died;We shall not wake with ballad stringsThe 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 BayeuxThe England of that dawn remains,And this of Alfred and the DanesSeems 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 treeThere came green devils out of the seaWith 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 hourOn peopled plains and skies that lower,From those few windows in the tower That is the head of a man.
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