Sonnets and Verse :: VI THE BALLAD OF VAL-ES-DUNES

VI THE BALLAD OF VAL-ES-DUNES

THE VICTORY OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR IN HIS YOUTH OVER THE REBELS AT VAL-ÈS-DUNES IN THE YEAR 1047

[This piece of verse is grossly unhistorical. Val-Ès-Dunes is not on the sea but inland. No Norman blazoned a shield or a church window in the middle eleventh century, still less would he frame one in silver, and I doubt gilt spurs. It was not the young Bastard of Falaise, but the men of the King in Paris that really won the battle. There was nothing Scandinavian left in Normandy, and whatever there had been five generations before was slight. The Colentin had no more Scandinavian blood than the rest. There is no such place as Longuevaile. There is a Hauteville, but it has no bay and had nothing to do with the Harcourts, and the Harcourts were not of Bloodroyal—and so forth.]

I

The men that lived in Longuevaile
Came out to fight by bands.
They jangled all in welded mail,
Their shields were rimmed of silver pale
And blazoned like a church-vitrail:
Their swords were in their hands.
But the harsh raven of the Old Gods
Was on the rank sea-sands.

There rose a wind on heath and den:
The sky went racing grey.
The Bastard and his wall of men
Were a charger’s course away.

II

The Old Gods of the Northern Hall
Are in their narrow room.
Their thrones are flanked of spearmen tall,
The three that have them in their thrall,
Sit silently before them all,
They weave upon their loom;
And round about them as they weave
The Scalds sing doom.

III

The Bastard out of Normandy
Was angry for his wrong.
His eyes were virginal to see,
For nothing in his heart had he
But a hunger for his great degree;
And his back was broad and strong
As are the oxen of the field,
That pull the ploughs along.

IV

He saw that column of cavalry wheel,
Split outward, and deploy.
He heard, he heard the Oliphant peal.
He crooked an angry knee to feel
The scabbard against his gilded heel.
He had great joy:
And he stood upright in the stirrup steel.
Because he was a boy.
. . . . . .
We faced their ordering, all the force,
And there was little sound;
But Haribert-Le-Marshall’s horse
Pawed heavily the ground.

V

As the broad ships out of Barbary
Come driving from the large,
With yards a-bend and courses free,
And tumbling down their decks a-lee,
The hurrahing of the exultant sea,
So drave they to the charge.
But the harsh raven of the Old Gods
Was on the rank sea-marge.

VI

The Old Gods of the Northern Hall
Are crownÉd for the tomb.
Their biers are flanked of torches tall,
And through the flames that leap and fall
There comes a droning and a call
To the night’s womb,
As the tide beneath a castle wall
Goes drumming through the gloom.

VII

They tonsured me but Easter year,
I swore to Christ and Rome.
My name is not mine older name....
But ah! to see them as they came,
With thundering and with points aflame,
I smelt foam.
And my heart was like a wandering man’s,
Who piles his boat on Moorna sands
And serves a slave in alien lands,
And then beneath a harper’s hands
Hears suddenly of home.
. . . . . .
For their cavalry came in a curling leaf,
They shouted as they drave,
And the Bastard’s line was like a reef
But theirs was like a wave.

VIII

As the broad ships out of Barbary
Strike rock.
And the stem shatters, and the sail flaps;
Streaming seaward; and the taut shroud snaps,
And the block
Clatters to the deck of the wreck.
So did the men of Longuevaile
Take the shock.

IX

Our long line quivered but it did not break,
It countered and was strong.
The first bolt went through the wind with a wail,
And another and a-many with a thudding on the mail;
Pattered all the arrows in an April hail;
Whistled the ball and thong:
And I, the priest, with that began
The singing of my song.

X

Press inward, inward, Normandy;
Press inward, Cleres and Vaux;
Press inward, Mons and Valery;
Press inward, Yvetot.
Stand hard the men of the Beechen Ford
(Oh! William of Falaise, my lord!)
Battle is a net and a struggle in a cord.
Battle is a wrestler’s throw.
The middle holding as the wings made good,
The far wings closing as the centre stood.
Battle is a mist and battle is a wood,
And battle is won so.

XI

The fishermen fish in the River of Seine,
They haul the long nets in.
They haul them in and they haul again,
(The fishermen fish in the River of Seine)
They haul them in and they haul again,
A million glittering fin:
With the hauling in of our straining ends
That Victory did begin.

XII

The tall son of the Seven Winds
Galloped hot-foot from the Hither Hithe.
So strongly went he down the press,
Almost he did that day redress
With his holping and his hardiness,
For his sword was like a scythe
In Arques when the grass is high,
And all the swaithes in order lie,
And there’s the bailiff standing by—
A gathering of the tithe.

XIII

And now, go forward, Normandy,
Go forward all in one.
The press was caught and trampled and it broke
From the sword and its swinger and the axe’s stroke,
Pouring through the gap in a whirl of smoke
As a blinded herd will run.
And so fled many and a very few
With mounts all spent would staggering pursue,
But the race fell scattered as the evening grew:
The battle was over and done.
. . . . . .
Like birds against the reddening day
They dwindled one by one,
And I heard a trumpet far away
At the setting of the sun.
. . . . . .

XIV

The stars were in the Eternal Sky,
It was calm in Massared;
Richard, Abbot of Leclair, and I
And a Picard Priest that held on high
A Torch above his head;
We stumbled through the darkening land
Assoiling with anointed hand
The dying and the dead.

XV

How many in the tufted grass,
How many dead there lay.
For there was found the Fortenbras
And young Garain of Hault, alas!
And the Wardens of the Breton pass
Who were lords of his array,
And Hugh that trusted in his glass
But came not home the day.

XVI

I saw the miller of Martindall,
I saw that archer die.
The blunt quarrel caught him at the low white wall,
And he tossed up his arrow to the Lord God of all,
But long before the first could fall
His soul was in the sky.

XVII

The last of all the lords that sprang
From Harcourt of the Crown,
He parried with the shield and the silver rang,
But the axe fell heavy on the helm with a clang
And the girths parted and the saddle swang,
And he went down:
He never more sang winter songs
In his high town.

XVIII

In his high town that FaËry is,
And stands on Harcourt bay,
The fisher surging through the night
Takes bearing by that castle height,
And moors him harboured in the bight,
And watches for the day.
But with the broadening of the light,
It vanishes away.

XIX

In his high town that FaËry is,
And stands on Harcourt Lea.
To summon him up his arrier-ban,
His writ beyond the mountains ran;
My father was his serving man,
Although the farm was free.
Before the angry wars began
He was a friend to me.

XX

The night before the boy was born
There came a Priest who said
That he had seen red Aldeborn,
The star of hate in Taurus’ horn,
Which glared above a field of corn,
And covered him with dread.
I wish to God I had not held
The cloth in which he bled.
. . . . . .

XXI

The Horse from Cleres and Valery,
The foot from Yvetot,
And all the men of the Harbour Towns
That live by fall and flow.
And all the men of the Beechen Ford
—Oh! William of Falaise, my lord!—
And all the sails in Michael’s ward,
And all the shields of Caux,
Shall follow you out across the world,
With sword and lance and bow,
To Beachy and to Pevensey Bar,
To Chester through the snow,
With sack and pack and camping tent,
A-grumbling as they go:
My lord is William of Falaise.
Haro!

FOOTNOTES:

[A]

But do not think I shall explain
To any great extent. Believe me,
I partly write to give you pain,
And if you do not like me, leave me.

[B]

And least of all can you complain,
Reviewers, whose unholy trade is,
To puff with all your might and main
Biographers of single ladies.

[C] Never mind.

[D]

The plan forgot (I know not how,
Perhaps the Refectory filled it),
To put a chapel in; and now
We’re mortgaging the rest to build it.

[E] To be pronounced as a monosyllable in the Imperial fashion.

[F] Mr Punt, Mr Howl, and Mr Grewcock (now, alas, deceased).

[G] A neat rendering of “Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.”

[H] To the Examiners: These facts (of which I guarantee the accuracy) were given me by a Director.

[I] A reminiscence of Milton: “Fas est et ab hoste docere.”

[J] Lambkin told me he regretted this line, which was for the sake of Rhyme. He would willingly have replaced it, but to his last day could construct no substitute.

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