Your Book Review: The Ballad of the White Horse

Finalist #14 in the Book Review Contest

[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]

Introduction

The Ballad of the White Horse is a 2,684 line poem about conservatism, and it is brilliant. It has been called the last great epic poem written in English. I have not read the three dozen or so English epic poems that Wikipedia claims have been written since, so I cannot confirm the “last” part, but I can confirm the rest. It is a great poem, in both quality and size, and it is undoubtedly an epic poem. It has almost all the qualities required of an epic poem: it begins by invoking a muse (his wife), it starts in media res, the plot is centered around a hero of legend, there are supernatural visions and interventions, and an omniscient narrator. The only epic requirement it lacks is a long boring list shoved in somewhere, for which I am grateful. 

On the surface level the poem is about King Alfred the Great, a pre-Hastings Anglo-Saxon king who has the twin qualities of being both legendary and real. There was certainly an actual King Alfred who really did fight a Viking lord named Guthrum and built the foundation needed for his grandson to form the Kingdom of England. He is considered the first English king, and is the only English monarch to be given the epithet “the Great”. At the same time he is also a figure of legend. They say he disguised himself as a wandering minstrel and played the harp for Guthrum in his own camp on the night before they would meet in battle. They also say he once accidentally burned a peasant woman’s cakes, and she, not knowing he was her king, chewed him out thoroughly (I’d expand on that, but that’s really the whole legend; one of those stories told to children that seem to have no moral or point). 

In the introduction Chesterton tells us straight off that his poem is not meant to be historically accurate.

This ballad needs no historical notes, for the simple reason that it does not profess to be historical. All of it that is not frankly fictitious, as in any prose romance about the past, is meant to emphasize tradition rather than history. King Alfred is not a legend in the sense that King Arthur may be a legend; that is, in the sense that he may possibly be a lie. But King Alfred is a legend in this broader and more human sense, that the legends are the most important things about him.

The legend of King Alfred the Great is well told by Chesterton and his story is entertaining and engaging with a climactic battle, death duels, suspense, and burnt cakes. If all you get out of it is an entertaining yarn then your time will be well spent. The poetry is excellent, and accessible to the layman. As the tweet said, people want poetry to rhyme so bad. Chesterton gives that to us. His lines are a joy to read aloud (as all good poetry should).

Beneath that, not all that well hidden, the Ballad is Chesterton’s love song to conservatism as he understands it. In it Chesterton weaves the ideas that he has been writing about all his life and creates a cohesive narrative theme. The Ballad is like a melody that all his other works, fiction and nonfiction, dance to. Chesterton wrote many books, yet none seemed to stand higher than the others in terms of quality or popularity. Because of this he has been called “the master without a masterpiece” (though, appropriately, the quote itself seems legendary: I have found it referenced everywhere but I cannot find the source). I disagree: the Ballad of the White Horse is his masterpiece. It is Chesterton boiled down to his essence. Within it we find two core themes of Chesterton’s body of work: hope in defiance of fate, and the eternal revolution.

The Doom of Alfred

The poem begins with the White Horse and the destruction of the world. How the White Horse of Uffington was there before Rome was founded, and remained after its collapse. We are introduced to the poem’s post-apocalyptic setting: 

For the end of the world was long ago
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth.
Like a strange people left on Earth
After a judgment day.

Rome has fallen and England is plunged into chaos. The vikings have come and are sweeping over the land conquering all in their path. Chesterton depicts them as savage men bent on death and destruction: 

The Northmen came about our land:
A Christless chivalry
Who knew not of the arch, or pen
Great beautiful, half-witted men
From the sunrise and the sea […]

Their souls were drifting as the sea
And all good towns and lands
They only saw with heavy eyes
And broke with heavy hands.

Against these “Hairy men, as huge as sin” we find King Alfred of Wessex alone, fighting a desperate and losing campaign. Rather, when we find him he is not fighting but fleeing alone and hunted through the woods after a lost battle. Chesterton heaps on how badly things are stacked against Alfred. The vikings have won battle after battle, and even when Alfred successfully fended them off they would come again year after year, wearing him down: 

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. 

Alfred has not only lost a battle, but lost most of his vassals and allies as well. Wessex is outnumbered, outfought, and facing the end. There is no-one left to help them. Chesterton repeats this multiple times to make sure we get the point: that the Vikings 

…laid hold upon the heavens
And no help came at all

or how Alfred fought them 

With foemen leaning on his shield
And roaring on him when he reeled;
And no help came at all.

Alfred’s plight is so desperate that he is losing all hope of victory:

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.

It is here, fleeing and alone, where Alfred receives a vision of Mary, the Mother of God. Alfred tells her that while he wouldn’t presume to ask about the secrets of God or Heaven, he would like to know whether he will somehow drive back the Vikings, or if the fate of Wessex is to die fighting and fade away. Mary corrects him; any man can ask and receive the secrets of God, but she will not tell him his fate. 

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.

Here we are introduced to one of Chesterton’s core themes: hope versus fate. Chesterton sees hope as one of the primary distinguishers between Christianity and paganism, buddhism, eastern philosophy in general, and materialistic determinism.  We see this same dichotomy in another of Chesterton’s great poems, Lepanto, where he has Muhammed, enthroned in glory in the Muslim paradise, say:

We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.

This contrast, between the fatalism of the East and the defiance of fate of the West, is expounded on further by Mary in the Ballad:

“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 the dark.

“The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.

We see this theme repeated throughout the poem, comparing the Christian Alfred to the pagan Guthrum and his men. Later in the Ballad Alfred disguises himself as a bard and, having snuck into the viking camp, has a philosophical debate with Guthrum and his three captains in the form of singing competition. After Alfred plays, each of the Viking lords play as well, and each of their songs puts forward their view of life. The youngest Viking sings boldly of hedonism, how he takes what he wants from the world and enjoys each thing thoroughly. The next Viking, somewhat older, sings sadly about how the god Baldur the beautiful was slain, and how all good things eventually come to ruin. The next, even older, sings a song of rage against the gods and against the world, and how after a man tires of women and ale he takes comfort in battle. The fate of all men is to die, and the fate of the world is to burn, and so he will become a participant in the destruction instead of merely a victim of it. Finally Guthrum, the oldest, sings:

For he sang of a wheel returning,
And the mire trod back to mire,
And how red hells and golden heavens
Are castles in the fire.

"It is good to sit where the good tales go,
To sit as our fathers sat;
But the hour shall come after his youth,
When a man shall know not tales but truth,
And his heart fail thereat.

"When he shall read what is written
So plain in clouds and clods,
When he shall hunger without hope
Even for evil gods.

"For this is a heavy matter,
And the truth is cold to tell;
Do we not know, have we not heard,
The soul is like a lost bird,
The body a broken shell.

"And a man hopes, being ignorant,
Till in white woods apart
He finds at last the lost bird dead:
And a man may still lift up his head
But never more his heart.

"There comes no noise but weeping
Out of the ancient sky,
And a tear is in the tiniest flower
Because the gods must die.

"The little brooks are very sweet,
Like a girl's ribbons curled,
But the great sea is bitter
That washes all the world.

"Strong are the Roman roses,
Or the free flowers of the heath,
But every flower, like a flower of the sea,
Smelleth with the salt of death.

"And the heart of the locked battle
Is the happiest place for men;
When shrieking souls as shafts go by
And many have died and all may die;
Though this word be a mystery,
Death is most distant then.

"Death blazes bright above the cup,
And clear above the crown;
But in that dream of battle
We seem to tread it down.

"Wherefore I am a great king,
And waste the world in vain,
Because man hath not other power,
Save that in dealing death for dower,
He may forget it for an hour
To remember it again."

This song of resignation to death is fitting for a Viking. What myths and tales we have from the pagan Norse tell a story of fated destruction: that Ragnarok will come, and the gods will fight the giants, and they all will certainly die. The sun and moon will be devoured and even the victors of that battle will succumb to their wounds. 

Alfred, in contrast, takes up the harp and sings a song of hope:

"When God put man in a garden
He girt him with a sword,
And sent him forth a free knight
That might betray his lord;

"He brake Him and betrayed Him,
And fast and far he fell,
Till you and I may stretch our necks
And burn our beards in hell.

"But though I lie on the floor of the world,
With the seven sins for rods,
I would rather fall with Adam
Than rise with all your gods.

"What have the strong gods given?
Where have the glad gods led?
When Guthrum sits on a hero's throne
And asks if he is dead?

"Sirs, I am but a nameless man,
A rhymester without home,
Yet since I come of the Wessex clay
And carry the cross of Rome,

"I will even answer the mighty earl
That asked of Wessex men
Why they be meek and monkish folk,
And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke;
What sign have we save blood and smoke?
Here is my answer then.

"That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly,
And you hang over us like the sky,
You are more tired of victory,
Than we are tired of shame.

"That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare on the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.

"That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.

"Your lord sits high in the saddle,
A broken-hearted king,
But our king Alfred, lost from fame,
Fallen among foes or bonds of shame,
In I know not what mean trade or name,
Has still some song to sing;

What is Hope?

Critics of virtue ethics will often question how you can know what virtues the virtue ethicist should cultivate. In Catholic theology there is no such problem, as they have seven official virtues specified. Four of these virtues they inherited from Greek philosophy and they represent the practical and straightforward virtues that any rational man is likely to find worthwhile: prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude.  Added to these four were three virtues unique to Christianity, believed to be revelations from God that mankind would not identify if left to their own devices. These three are faith, hope, and love. 

Love is fairly easy to comprehend, though you could write volumes on its nuances as a virtue. Faith is more controversial, but still graspable: just as we have faith that the plane won’t crash when we take a long flight, Christians have faith in God’s promises. They hold to their belief, in the face of doubt. Hope, however, is harder to grok.. 

Hope is, of course, the desire for something combined with the expectation that you will receive it. What does it mean for hope to be a virtue then? I have hope for a tasty dinner tonight, but it is hard to see what is virtuous about that. Presumably it is a virtue to have hope for heaven, or hope for the beatific vision, or simple hope of salvation, but how is that different than having faith in those things? If I have faith that I am saved from my sins, that means I believe it and that I will try to continue to believe it despite the ups and downs of life and the fears that may haunt me from time to time. What does hope add to that? Is hope simply faith in things we desire? It kind of seems like hope isn’t pulling its own weight in the virtue department. 

The Catholics, of course, have an answer for this (you don’t spend two thousand years trying to hash out theology without producing volumes of work on every little facet of it). Faith, they say, is an act of the intellect. You believe something (presumably because you have good reason to) and then you choose to continue believing it. Hope is not an act of the intellect, but an act of will. You desire something and you choose to act as if that desire is attainable. Hope spurs you to move. Hope lies between the twin errors of despair, where you do not believe your desire is possible to obtain, and presumption, where you believe that you are certain to obtain your desire. Both errors will prevent you from acting; in the first case because nothing you do can obtain what you desire, and in the second because no action is necessary to obtain it. In the middle lies hope. You desire salvation, you believe it is possible but not certain that you will obtain it, and you take action to do so. Faith is all in your head, while hope is in your heart and your feet. 

It is hope that drives Alfred forward. He asks Mary to know what the final result will be, seeking either despair or presumption. Mary will not tell him. The only answer she will give is this:

I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

She disappears and Alfred is alone again. She has not given him any comfort: either the comfort of knowing that he will prevail, or the lesser comfort of knowing that he will fail and his struggles will soon be over. All he can do is continue his efforts as before, in hope; but this hope rejuvenates him. Before the vision he was falling to despair, but afterwards:

Up across windy wastes and up
Went Alfred over the shaws,
Shaken of the joy of giants,
The joy without a cause.

The Adventure

So Alfred has hope and his enemies do not. The Vikings display both errors of hope simultaneously. They presume that their victory is certain, merely because they have won over and over and their enemy is outnumbered, scattered, and demoralized. Yet Guthrum also despairs for he has no hope of anything he does lasting beyond his life. All will burn in Surtr’s fire, and all will die with Odin. As Chesterton writes in his book Orthodoxy: 

To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead.

Fate is dead, in as much as it cannot move or change. To a pagan like Guthrum no man can escape his “wyrd”, no matter what he does. No action he can take will change his doom. 

Alright, so fate leads to despair or presumption. But why should the “West”, the Christians, be any different? Don’t they believe that the ultimate fate of everything is also set? That the trump will sound, Jesus will descend, and evil will be done away with forevermore? What advantage does the “West” have against the “East” when it comes to fate? 

For Chesterton, a Christian is in the exact reversed position as the pagan; if the pagan finds the small things sweet, but the big things bitter the Christian finds the big things sweet and the small things bitter. To the Christian the universe has a happy ending for certain, but he may not. Nothing he can do will change the ultimate fate of the universe, but what he does today could change his own ultimate fate.  Which brings us to the other half of the equation: the risk of failure. Chesterton again:

“To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian existence is a story, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he might be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn't…the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong an element of will, of what theology calls free-will. You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like. When somebody discovered the Differential Calculus there was only one Differential Calculus he could discover. But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married him to Juliet's old nurse if he had felt inclined. And Christendom has excelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted on the theological free-will.

This is the real dividing line Chesterton makes between his “West and East”. In order for a philosophy to stir men to action there must be stakes. There must be something real to gain, and something real to lose. Chesterton sees this as the engine of all human progress: 

In so far as we desire the definite reconstructions and the dangerous revolutions which have distinguished European civilization, we shall not discourage the thought of possible ruin; we shall rather encourage it. If we want, like the Eastern saints, merely to contemplate how right things are, of course we shall only say that they must go right. But if we particularly want to make them go right, we must insist that they may go wrong.

We see this idea repeated in the Balled during Alfred’s vision of Mary, in which she says

"But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.”

And because Alfred believes that the battle can go right, and can certainly go wrong, he acts.

Piling Stones

When the battle finally comes, Alfred fails. 

His three mighty captains fight like heroes, but each are slain in turn. The Vikings are too strong, their numbers too great, and Alfred’s men break. Alfred finds himself in the same position as the beginning of the poem: fleeing for his life after a disastrous battle. He had hope, but what he desired has not come to pass. The Lady was right: “The sky grows darker yet, and the sea rises higher.”

So what does Alfred do? He does the same thing he did at the beginning of the poem. He starts over and tries again. 

And this was the might of Alfred,
At the ending of the way;
That of such smiters, wise or wild,
He was least distant from the child,
Piling the stones all day.

For Eldred fought like a frank hunter
That killeth and goeth home;
And Mark had fought because all arms
Rang like the name of Rome.

And Colan fought with a double mind,
Moody and madly gay;
But Alfred fought as gravely
As a good child at play.

He saw wheels break and work run back
And all things as they were;
And his heart was orbed like victory
And simple like despair.

Therefore is Mark forgotten,
That was wise with his tongue and brave;
And the cairn over Colan crumbled,
And the cross on Eldred's grave.

Their great souls went on a wind away,
And they have not tale or tomb;
And Alfred born in Wantage
Rules England till the doom.

Because in the forest of all fears
Like a strange fresh gust from sea,
Struck him that ancient innocence
That is more than mastery.

And as a child whose bricks fall down
Re-piles them o'er and o'er,
Came ruin and the rain that burns,
Returning as a wheel returns,
And crouching in the furze and ferns
He began his life once more.

Alfred blows his battle horn, and his men pause mid-flight. Alfred gives a stirring battle speech, rallies his men, reforms the ranks, and charges into the Viking line once more. The Vikings, having already started to celebrate, are confused. The fight was hopeless for Alfred from the start, and now he charges in again with half his men gone? And we get the final grand battle scene:

Wild stared the Danes at the double ways
Where they loitered, all at large,
As that dark line for the last time
Doubled the knee to charge—

And caught their weapons clumsily,
And marvelled how and why—
In such degree, by rule and rod,
The people of the peace of God
Went roaring down to die.

And when the last arrow
Was fitted and was flown,
When the broken shield hung on the breast,
And the hopeless lance was laid in rest,
And the hopeless horn blown,

The King looked up, and what he saw
Was a great light like death,
For Our Lady stood on the standards rent,
As lonely and as innocent
As when between white walls she went
And the lilies of Nazareth.

One instant in a still light
He saw Our Lady then,
Her dress was soft as western sky,
And she was a queen most womanly—
But she was a queen of men.

Over the iron forest
He saw Our Lady stand,
Her eyes were sad withouten art,
And seven swords were in her heart—
But one was in her hand.

Then the last charge went blindly,
And all too lost for fear:
The Danes closed round, a roaring ring,
And twenty clubs rose o'er the King,
Four Danes hewed at him, halloing,
And Ogier of the Stone and Sling
Drove at him with a spear.

But the Danes were wild with laughter,
And the great spear swung wide,
The point stuck to a straggling tree,
And either host cried suddenly,
As Alfred leapt aside.

Short time had shaggy Ogier
To pull his lance in line—
He knew King Alfred's axe on high,
He heard it rushing through the sky,
He cowered beneath it with a cry—
It split him to the spine:
And Alfred sprang over him dead,
And blew the battle sign.

Then bursting all and blasting
Came Christendom like death,
Kicked of such catapults of will,
The staves shiver, the barrels spill,
The waggons waver and crash and kill
The waggoners beneath.

Barriers go backwards, banners rend,
Great shields groan like a gong—
Horses like horns of nightmare
Neigh horribly and long.

Horses ramp high and rock and boil
And break their golden reins,
And slide on carnage clamorously,
Down where the bitter blood doth lie,
Where Ogier went on foot to die,
In the old way of the Danes.

 "The high tide!" King Alfred cried.
"The high tide and the turn!
As a tide turns on the tall grey seas,
See how they waver in the trees,
How stray their spears, how knock their knees,
How wild their watchfires burn!”

Here, called by the sound of the renewed battle, a host of Alfred’s men who had fled return and crash into the Vikings’ flank, breaking their line and sending the Northmen into a rout. Alfred, through perseverance, is victorious. The battle ends with Guthrum looking on, amazed. In the poem, as in real life, it will not be long before he is baptized. 

The White Horse and the Eternal Revolution

Why is the poem named The Ballad of the White Horse?

The poem begins with the White Horse of Uffington, and the White Horse winds in and out of the poem here and there, but the primary focus is on Alfred. Chesterton sets the battle in the White Horse Vale but the White Horse itself doesn’t really come into it. It doesn’t suddenly inspire Alfred to action, he doesn’t mention it in his stirring speech to his men, and it doesn’t have any tactical impact on the battle itself. So why is it the Ballad of the White Horse instead of The Ballad of King Alfred? In the eighth and final section of the poem we get our answer, and find the second of Chesterton’s core themes.. 

It is now many decades in the future. Alfred has had a long and prosperous reign and the kingdom has flourished. He is holding court in the White Horse Vale on scouring day. Every year the villages from around the vale come to the White Horse and hold a festival. During that festival they scour the Horse: they cut away all the weeds and turf that have started to grow over the chalk lines that make up the Horse. They scrape the chalk itself, which grays with dirt and dust, until it is white and clean again. They make a great party of it, and Alfred, now old, enjoys watching the work. 

Suddenly a messenger comes bearing bad tidings:

"Danes drive the white East Angles
In six fights on the plains,
Danes waste the world about the Thames,
Danes to the eastward—Danes!"

After the battle Alfred made a peace treaty with Guthrum, yet now the Vikings have come again, looting and killing. One of Alfred’s young vassals voices his anger with the Vikings, and his despair that King Alfred was not able to defeat them and be done with them all those years ago:

But the young earl said: "Ill the saints,
The saints of England, guard
The land wherein we pledge them gold;
The dykes decay, the King grows old,
And surely this is hard,

 "That we be never quit of them;
That when his head is hoar
He cannot say to them he smote,
And spared with a hand hard at the throat,
'Go, and return no more.'"

To this Alfred smiles, and points to the peasants on the hill, scouring the White Horse.

"Will ye part with the weeds for ever?
Or show daisies to the door?
Or will you bid the bold grass
Go, and return no more?

"So ceaseless and so secret
Thrive terror and theft set free;
Treason and shame shall come to pass
While one weed flowers in a morass;
And like the stillness of stiff grass
The stillness of tyranny.

"Over our white souls also
Wild heresies and high
Wave prouder than the plumes of grass,
And sadder than their sigh.

"And I go riding against the raid,
And ye know not where I am;
But ye shall know in a day or year,
When one green star of grass grows here;
Chaos has charged you, charger and spear,
Battle-axe and battering-ram.

"And though skies alter and empires melt,
This word shall still be true:
If we would have the horse of old,
Scour ye the horse anew.”

This is what Chesterton calls the eternal revolution. To quote again from Orthodoxy:

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. 

If you want to conserve something then you commit yourself to revolutionary action. To preserve what is good you not only need to protect it, you need to actively rebuild it. If you want a white post then you must strip the old paint and paint it white again, every few years, forever. Chesterton teaches that it is such with all good things. His hero is not merely the man who defeats the enemy, but the one who always rises to fight them again. The man with hope; that is to say, a vision of what he wants and the will to take action to get it. Without such hope all good things will fall to ruin: with it they can be preserved eternally. 

Which is why the whole poem is named after the White Horse! There are certainly things older than the White Horse, like Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid of Giza, but they are made of stone. Giant stones, hard to knock over or carry away and well suited to survive the elements. You don’t have to do much of anything to preserve them other than leave them alone. The White Horse, on the other hand, is soft chalk lines cut out of the turf. If you left it alone for 20 years it would disappear completely. The only way it can persist is if it is regularly scoured, and yet it has persisted for 3,000 years. The people of the White Horse vale cut the horse out of the grass before the first stone was laid in Rome, and they cut it out to this day. As long as they do the Horse can last another three millennia. As soon as they stop, it will disappear. The same is true for all human institutions: for nations, constitutions, laws, traditions, stories, ambitions, and dreams. You will never “part with weeds forever, or show daisies to the door”. 

This, then, is Chesterton’s thesis. Everything corrupts, but can be preserved. What is needed to preserve what is good is hope, risk, and revolution. The poem’s ending reiterates this theme neatly:

Loud was the war on London wall,
And loud in London gates,
And loud the sea-kings in the cloud
Broke through their dreaming gods, and loud
Cried on their dreadful Fates.

And all the while on White Horse Hill
The horse lay long and wan,
The turf crawled and the fungus crept,
And the little sorrel, while all men slept,
Unwrought the work of man.

With velvet finger, velvet foot,
The fierce soft mosses then
Crept on the large white commonweal
All folk had striven to strip and peel,
And the grass, like a great green witch's wheel,
Unwound the toils of men.

And clover and silent thistle throve,
And buds burst silently,
With little care for the Thames Valley
Or what things there might be—

That away on the widening river,
In the eastern plains for crown
Stood up in the pale purple sky
One turret of smoke like ivory;
And the smoke changed and the wind went by,
And the King took London Town.