By their Fruits

By coincidence, I was rereading the end of The Ballad of the White Horse the other day. After a book-length epic poem, Chesterton allows his King Alfred the Great to sum up the lessons he wants his contemporary readers to take.
In some far century, sad and slow,
I have a vision, and I know
The heathen shall return.

"They shall not come with warships,
They shall not waste with brands,
But books be all their eating,
And ink be on their hands....

"They shall come mild as monkish clerks,
With many a scroll and pen;
And backward shall ye turn and gaze,
Desiring one of Alfred's days,
When pagans still were men....

"By this sign you shall know them,
The breaking of the sword,
And man no more a free knight,
That loves or hates his lord.

"Yea, this shall be the sign of them,
The sign of the dying fire;
And Man made like a half-wit,
That knows not of his sire.

"What though they come with scroll and pen,
And grave as a shaven clerk,
By this sign you shall know them,
That they ruin and make dark;

"By all men bond to Nothing,
Being slaves without a lord,
By one blind idiot world obeyed,
Too blind to be abhorred;

"By terror and the cruel tales
Of curse in bone and kin,
By weird and weakness winning,
Accursed from the beginning,
By detail of the sinning,
And denial of the sin....
I suppose he thought that's where he was in 1903, or he wouldn't have written a book about it. It certainly sounds familiar today.

5 comments:

  1. ymarsakar1:14 PM

    It partially lines up with the Ymar stuff I keep describing, that AMerica's greatest enemy is within. It is not foreigners. It is not immigrants. It's not ISIL. It's not China or Russia.

    It's within the gates, in the mirror.

    Many so called mass casualty terror attacks would need to do as much damage as Antifa/BLM/Leftists + Corona event?

    This is damage self inflicted.

    It is a problem with the self, not with the foreign Other.

    This is why I wrote that Trump won't save the voters from the LEftist alliance. Trump has to see this mission through, which means people will only wake up if they see the truth for themselves. This is adherence to Free Will. IF you tell a child that fire is hot and that the red stuff is dangerous, but they still want to touch it and experience it before believing, then let them do so.

    If Trump came in as a Savior, he would be doing the Cabal a favor. What others now call the Deep State, although it is not something they know. IT's something they heard HRC use and the fake news kept talking about it.

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  2. ymarsakar1:17 PM

    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44263/fire-and-ice

    Some say the world will end in fire,
    Some say in ice.
    From what I’ve tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favor fire.
    But if it had to perish twice,
    I think I know enough of hate
    To say that for destruction ice
    Is also great
    And would suffice.

    The world is not gonna end, so sayeth Ymar.

    But Fire, yes there will be Divine Fire. I call on the 5th or maybe that's the First Amendment, talking religion here.

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  3. Well......GKC has been regarded as a "prophet" for quite some time. I'm not sure that he "was there" at that time.....but he certainly knew enough about human nature to take the obvious (the French Revolution and the "Enlightenment"), add 2+2, and get a solid 4.

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  4. raven8:57 PM

    Remarkable poem. Thank you for posting it.

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  5. You're welcome. It's one of the great epic poems, a genre nearly abandoned by humanity.

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