Author: Scott Mannion
THE GREEN KNIGHT FOXHUNTING READING
GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT FOXHUNTING READING After Mass of a morsel he and his men partook.Merry was the morning. For his mount then he called.All the huntsmen that on horse behind him should followwere ready mounted to ride arrayed at the gates.Wondrous fair were the fields, for the frost clung there ;in red rose-hued o’er the wrack arises the sun,sailing clear along the coasts of the cloudy heavens.The hunters loosed hounds by a holt-border ;the rocks rang i n the wood to the roar of their horm.Some fell on the line to where the fox was lying,crossing and re-crossing it in the cunning oftheir craft.A hound then gives tongue, the huntsman names him,round him press his companions in a pack all snufing,running forth in a rabble then right in his path. The fox flits before them. They find him at once,and when they sec him by sight they pursue him hotly,decrying him fuJI clearly with a clamour ofwrath.He dodges and ever doubles through many a dense coppice,and looping oft he lurks and listens under fences.At last at a little ditch he leaps o’er a thorn-hedge,sneaks out secretly by the side of a thicket,weens he is out of the wood and away by his wiles from the hounds. Thus he went unawares to a watch that was posted,where fierce on him fell three foes at onceall grey. He swerves then swift again, and dauntless darts astray ; in grief and in great pain to the wood he turns away.Then to hark to the hounds it was heart’s delight,when all the pack came upon him, there pressing together. Such a curse at the view they called down on rum that the clustering clills might ha\’e clauered in ruin. Here he was hallooed when hunters came on him, yonder was he assailed with snarling tongues ;there he was threatened and oft thief was he called,with ever the trailers at his tail so that tarry he could not. Oft was he run at, if he rushed outwards; oft he swerved in again, so subtle was Reynard.Yea I he led the lord and his hunt as laggards behind himthus by mount and by hill till mid-afternoon. At last the fox he has felled that he followed so long ;for, he spurred through a spinney to espy there the villain, where the hounds he had heard that hard on him pressed, Reynard on his road came through a rough thicket, and all the rabble in a rush were right on his heels.The man is aware of the wild thing, and watchful awaits him, brings out his bright brand and at the beast hurls it ;and he blenched at the blade, and would have backed if he could. A hound hastened up, and had him ere he could ;and right before the horse’s feet they fell on him all,and worried there the wily one with a wild clamour.The lord quickly alights and lifts him at once,snatching him swiftly from their slavering mouths,holds him high o’er his head, hallooing loudly;and there bay at him fiercely many furious hounds.Huntsmen hurried thither, with horns full manyever sounding the assembly, till they saw the master.When together had come his company noble,all that ever bore bugle were blowing at once,and all the others hallooed that had not a horn :it was the merriest music that ever men harkened,the resounding song there raised that for Reynard’s soul awoke. To hounds they pay their fees, their heads they fondly stroke, and Reynard then they seize, and off they skin his cloak. And then homeward they hastened, for at hand was now night, making strong music on their mighty horns. ... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here
The Exiled One
Often the solitary one finds grace for himself the mercy of the Lord, Although he, sorry-hearted, must for a long time move by hand [in context = row] along the waterways, (along) the ice-cold sea, tread the paths of exile. Events always go as they must! So spoke the wanderer, mindful of hardships, of fierce slaughters and the downfall of kinsmen: Often (or always) I had alone to speak of my trouble each morning before dawn. There is none now living to whom I dare clearly speak of my innermost thoughts. I know it truly, that it is in men a noble custom, that one should keep secure his spirit-chest (mind), guard his treasure-chamber (thoughts), think as he wishes. The weary spirit cannot withstand fate (the turn of events), nor does a rough or sorrowful mind do any good (perform anything helpful). Thus those eager for glory often keep secure dreary thoughts in their breast; So I, often wretched and sorrowful, bereft of my homeland, far from noble kinsmen, have had to bind in fetters my inmost thoughts, Since long years ago I hid my lord in the darkness of the earth, and I, wretched, from there travelled most sorrowfully over the frozen waves, sought, sad at the lack of a hall, a giver of treasure, where I, far or near, might find one in the meadhall who knew my people, or wished to console the friendless one, me, entertain (me) with delights. He who has tried it knows how cruel is sorrow as a companion to the one who has few beloved friends: the path of exile (wræclast) holds him, not at all twisted gold, a frozen spirit, not the bounty of the earth. He remembers hall-warriors and the giving of treasure How in youth his lord (gold-friend) accustomed him to the feasting. All the joy has died! And so he knows it, he who must forgo for a long time the counsels of his beloved lord: Then sorrow and sleep both together often tie up the wretched solitary one. He thinks in his mind that he embraces and kisses his lord, and on his (the lord’s) knees lays his hands and his head, Just as, at times (hwilum), before, in days gone by, he enjoyed the gift-seat (throne). Then the friendless man wakes up again, He sees before him fallow waves Sea birds bathe, preening their feathers, Frost and snow fall, mixed with hail. Then are the heavier the wounds of the heart, grievous (sare) with longing for (æfter) the lord. Sorrow is renewed when the mind (mod) surveys the memory of kinsmen; He greets them joyfully, eagerly scans the companions of men; they always swim away. The spirits of seafarers never bring back there much in the way of known speech. Care is renewed for the one who must send very often over the binding of the waves a weary heart. Indeed I cannot think why my spirit does not darken when I ponder on the whole life of men throughout the world, How they suddenly left the floor (hall), the proud thanes. So this middle-earth, a bit each day, droops and decays – Therefore man (wer) cannot call himself wise, before he has a share of years in the world. A wise man must be patient, He must never be too impulsive nor too hasty of speech, nor too weak a warrior nor too reckless, nor too fearful, nor too cheerful, nor too greedy for goods, nor ever too eager for boasts, before he sees clearly. A man must wait when he speaks oaths, until the proud-hearted one sees clearly whither the intent of his heart will turn. A wise hero must realize how terrible it will be, when all the wealth of this world lies waste, as now in various places throughout this middle-earth walls stand, blown by the wind, covered with frost, storm-swept the buildings. The halls decay, their lords lie deprived of joy, the whole troop has fallen, the proud ones, by the wall. War took off some, carried them on their way, one, the bird took off across the deep sea, one, the gray wolf shared one with death, one, the dreary-faced man buried in a grave. And so He destroyed this city, He, the Creator of Men, until deprived of the noise of the citizens, the ancient work of giants stood empty.... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here
Kipling’s ‘A Charm’
A Charm Take of English earth as much As either hand may rightly clutch. In the taking of it breathe Prayer for all who lie beneath. Not the great nor well-bespoke, But the mere uncounted folk Of whose life and death is none Report or lamentation. Lay that earth upon thy heart, And thy sickness shall depart! It shall sweeten and make whole Fevered breath and festered soul. It shall mightily restrain Over-busied hand and brain. It shall ease thy mortal strife ‘Gainst the immortal woe of life, Till thyself, restored, shall prove By what grace the Heavens do move. Take of English flowers these — Spring’s full-faced primroses, Summer’s wild wide-hearted rose, Autumn’s wall-flower of the close, And, thy darkness to illume, Winter’s bee-thronged ivy-bloom. Seek and serve them where they bide From Candlemas to Christmas-tide, For these simples, used aright, Can restore a failing sight. These shall cleanse and purify Webbed and inward-turning eye; These shall show thee treasure hid Thy familiar fields amid; And reveal (which is thy need) Every man a King indeed!... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here
Tennyson’s Love thou thy land, with love far-brought
From out the storied Past, and used Within the Present, but transfused Thro’ future time by power of thought. True love turn’d round on fixed poles, Love, that endures not sordid ends, For English natures, freemen, friends, Thy brothers and immortal souls. But pamper not a hasty time, Nor feed with crude imaginings The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings, That every sophister can lime. Deliver not the tasks of might To weakness, neither hide the ray From those, not blind, who wait for day, Tho’ [1] sitting girt with doubtful light. Make knowledge [2] circle with the winds; But let her herald, Reverence, fly Before her to whatever sky Bear seed of men and growth [3] of minds. Watch what main-currents draw the years: Cut Prejudice against the grain: But gentle words are always gain: Regard the weakness of thy peers: Nor toil for title, place, or touch Of pension, neither count on praise: It grows to guerdon after-days: Nor deal in watch-words overmuch; Not clinging to some ancient saw; Not master’d by some modern term; Not swift nor slow to change, but firm: And in its season bring the law; That from Discussion’s lip may fall With Life, that, working strongly, binds– Set in all lights by many minds, To close the interests of all. For Nature also, cold and warm, And moist and dry, devising long, Thro’ many agents making strong, Matures the individual form. Meet is it changes should control Our being, lest we rust in ease. We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul. So let the change which comes be free To ingroove itself with that, which flies, And work, a joint of state, that plies Its office, moved with sympathy. A saying, hard to shape an act; For all the past of Time reveals A bridal dawn of thunder-peals, Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact. Ev’n now we hear with inward strife A motion toiling in the gloom– The Spirit of the years to come Yearning to mix himself with Life. A slow-develop’d strength awaits Completion in a painful school; Phantoms of other forms of rule, New Majesties of mighty States– The warders of the growing hour, But vague in vapour, hard to mark; And round them sea and air are dark With great contrivances of Power. Of many changes, aptly join’d, Is bodied forth the second whole, Regard gradation, lest the soul Of Discord race the rising wind; A wind to puff your idol-fires, And heap their ashes on the head; To shame the boast so often made, [4] That we are wiser than our sires. Oh, yet, if Nature’s evil star Drive men in manhood, as in youth, To follow flying steps of Truth Across the brazen bridge of war–[5] If New and Old, disastrous feud, Must ever shock, like armed foes, And this be true, till Time shall close, That Principles are rain’d in blood; Not yet the wise of heart would cease To hold his hope thro’ shame and guilt, But with his hand against the hilt, Would pace the troubled land, like Peace; Not less, tho’ dogs of Faction bay, [6] Would serve his kind in deed and word, Certain, if knowledge bring the sword, That knowledge takes the sword away– Would love the gleams of good that broke From either side, nor veil his eyes; And if some dreadful need should rise Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke: To-morrow yet would reap to-day, As we bear blossom of the dead; Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed Raw haste, half-sister to Delay.... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here
Alfred the Great’s PREFACE note
“And I would have it known that very often it has come to my mind what men of learning there were formerly throughout England, both in religious and secular orders; and how there were happy times then throughout England;2 and how the kings, who had authority over this people, obeyed God and his messengers; and how they not only maintained their peace, morality and authority at home but also extended their territory outside; and how they succeeded both in warfare and in wisdom; and also how eager were the religious orders both in teaching and in learning as well as in all the holy services which it was their duty to perform for God; and how people from abroad sought wisdom and instruction in this country; and how nowadays, if we wished to acquire these things, we would have to seek them outside.3 Learning had declined so thoroughly in England that there were very few men on this side of the Humber who could understand their divine services in English, or even translate a single letter from Latin into English: and I suppose that there were not many beyond the Humber either. There were so few of them that I cannot recollect even a single one south of the Thames when I succeeded to the kingdom.4 Thanks be to God Almighty that we now have any supply of teachers at all!5 Therefore I beseech you to do as I believe you are willing to do: as often as you can, free yourself from worldly affairs so that you may apply that wisdom which God gave you wherever you can. Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves did not cherish learning nor transmit it to other men.6 We were Christians in name alone, and very few of us possessed Christian virtues.7 When I reflected on all this, I recollected how – before everything was ransacked and burned – the churches throughout England stood filled with treasures and books. Similarly, there was a great multitude of those serving God. And they derived very little benefit from those books, because they could understand nothing of them, since they were not written in their own language. It is as if they had said: ‘Our ancestors, who formerly maintained these places, loved wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth and passed it on to us. Here one can still see their track, but we cannot follow it.’9 Therefore we have now lost the wealth as well as the wisdom, because we did not wish to set our minds to the track.When I reflected on all this, I wondered exceedingly why the good, wise men who were formerly found throughout England and had thoroughly studied all those books, did not wish to translate any part of them into their own language.” “But I immediately answered myself, and said: ‘They did not think that men would ever become so careless and that learning would decay like this; they refrained from doing it through this resolve, namely they wished that the more languages we knew, the greater would be the wisdom in this land.’ Then I recalled how the Law was first composed in the Hebrew language, and thereafter, when the Greeks learned it, they translated it all into their own language, and all other books as well. And so too the Romans, after they had mastered them, translated them all through learned interpreters into their own language. Similarly all the other Christian peoples turned some part of them into their own language.” Therefore it seems better to me – if it seems so to you – that we too should turn into the language that we can all understand certain books which are the most necessary for all men to know,13 and accomplish this, as with God’s help we may very easily do provided we have peace enough, so that all the free-born young men now in England who have the means to apply themselves to it, may be set to learning (as long as they are not useful for some other employment)14 until the time that they can read English writings properly. Thereafter one may instruct in Latin those whom one wishes to teach further and wishes to advance to holy orders.” “When I recalled how knowledge of Latin had previously decayed throughout England, and yet many could still read things written in English, I then began, amidst the various and multifarious afflictions of this kingdom, to translate into English the book which in Latin is called Pastoralis, in English ‘Shepherd-book’, sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense,15 as I learnt it from Plegmund my archbishop, and from Asser my bishop, and from Grimbald my mass-priest and from John my mass-priest.” “After I had mastered it, I translated it into English as best I understood it and as I could most meaningfully render it; I intend to send a copy to each bishopric in my kingdom; and in each copy there will be an æstel17 worth fifty mancuses. And in God’s name I command that no one shall take that æstel from the book, nor the book from the church. It is not known how long there shall be such learned bishops as, thanks be to God, there are now nearly everywhere. Therefore I would wish that they [the book and the æstel] always remain in place, unless the bishop wishes to have the book with him, or it is on loan somewhere, or someone is copying it. ”... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here
An American’s Pilgrimage to England reading
Full verse eluded to in Latest episode on USA. This is on the first page of An American’s Pilgrimage to England I think it’s called. Old book. I may make an ebook out of it at some point, post it on the website. “O Englishmen!–in hope and creed, In blood and tongue our brothers! We too are heirs of Runnymede; And Shakespeare’s fame and Cromwell’s deed Are not alone our mother’s. “Thicker than water,” in one rill Through centuries of story Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still We share with you its good and ill, The shadow and the glory. Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave Nor length of years can part us Your right is ours to shrine and grave, The common freehold of the brave, The gift of saints and martyrs. Our very sins and follies teach Our kindred frail and human We carp at faults with bitter speech, The while, for one unshared by each, We have a score in common. We bowed the heart, if not the knee, To England’s Queen, God bless her.”... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here
William Blake’s PREFACE & Jerusalem
“The stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible; but when the New Age is at leisure to pronounce, all will be set right, and those grand works of the more ancient, and consciously and professedly Inspired men will hold their proper rank, and the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration. Shakespeare and Milton were both curb’d by the general malady and infection from the silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword. Rouse up, O Young Men of the New Age! Set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings! For we have hirelings in the Camp, the Court, and the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress mental, and prolong corporeal war. Painters! on you I call. Sculptors! Architects! suffer not the fashionable fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works, or the expensive advertising boasts that they make of such works: believe Christ and His Apostles that there is a class of men whose whole delight is in destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just and true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever, in Jesus our Lord.” AND did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.” *Would to God that all the Lord’s people were Prophets. Numbers xi. 29.... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here
St. George’s Day – Enoch Powell
Enoch Powell speech on England. Once or twice at most in a lifetime a man ought to be allowed, as you have done me the honour to allow me tonight, to propose this toast. Introspection for a nation, as for an individual, is an unhealthy attitude unless it be sparingly practised; but from time to time and Englishman among other Englishmen may without harm, and even with advantage, seek to express I na spoken words just cause to praise his country. There was a saying, not heart today so often as formerly, “What do they know of England who only England knows?” It is a saying which dates. It has a period aroma, like Kipling’s Recessional, or the state rooms at Osborne. The period is that which the historian Sir John Seely, in a now almost forgotten at once immensely popular book, called “The Expansion of England”. In that incredible phase, which came upon the English unawares, as all true greatness comes unawares upon a nation, the power and influence of England expanded with the force and speed of an explosion. The strange & brief juncture of deep and invincible seapower with industrial potential brought the islands and the continents under the influence, I almost said under the spell, of England born and it was the Englishman who carried with him to the Rockies or the North-west Frontier, to the Australian deserts or the African lakes, “the thoughts of England given”, who seemed to himself and to a great part of his countrymen at home to be the typical Englishman with the truest perspective of England. That phase is ended, so plainly ended that even the generation born at its zenith, for whom the realisation is hardest, no longer deceive themselves, as to rue the fact. That power and that glory have vanished, as surely, if not tracelessly, as the Imperial fleet from wha waters of the spit-head; in the eye of history, no doubt as inevitably as “Nineveh and Tyre”, as Rome and Spain. Yet England is not as Nineveh and Tyre, nor as Rom, nor as Spain. Herodotus relates how Athenians, returning to their city after it had been sacked and burnt by Xerxes and the Persian army, were astonished to find alive and flourishing in the midst of the backend ruins, the sacred olive tree, the native symbol of their country. So we today at the heart of the vanished Empire, amid the fragments of demolished glory, seem to find like one of her own oak trees, standing and growing, the sap still rising from her ancient roots to meet the spring, England herself. Perhaps after all we know most of England “who only England know.” There was this deep, this providential difference between our Empire and those others, that of nationhood of the mother country remained through it all unaffected, almost unconscious of the strange fantastic structure built around her, — in modern parlance, “uninvolved” The citizenship of Rome dissolved into the citizenship of the ancient world; Spain learnt to live on the treasure of the Americas the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns extended their policy with their power, But England, which took as an axiom that the American Colonies could not be represented in Parliament and had to confess that even Ireland was not to be assimilated, underwent no organic change as the mistress of a World Empire, so the continuity of her existence was unbroken when the looser connections which had linked her with distant continents and strange races fell away. Thus our generation is like one which comes home again from years of distant wandering. We discover the affinities with earlier generations of English, generations before the “expansion of England”, who felt no country but this to be their own. We look upon the traces which they left with a new curiosity, the curiosity of finding ourselves once more akin with the old English. Backward goes our gaze, beyond the grenadiers and the philosophers of the eighteenth century, beyond the pikemen and the preachers of the seventeenth, back through the brash adventurous days of the first Elizabeth and the hard materialism of the Tudors, and there we find them at last, or seem to find them, in many a Village church, beneath the tall tracing of a perpendicular East window and the coffered ceiling of the chantry chapel. From the brass and stone, from the line and effigy, their eyes looks out at us, and we gaze into them, as if we could win some answer from their inscrutable silence. “Tell us what it is that binds us together”; show us the clue that leads through the thousands years; whisper to us the secret of this charmed life of England, that we in our time may know how to hold it fast.” What would they say? They would speak to us in our own English tongue, the tongue made for telling the truth in, tuned already to songs that haunt the hearer like the sadness of spring. They would tell us of that marvellous land, so sweetly mixes of opposites in climate that all the seasons of the year appear there in their greatest perfection; of the fields amid which they built their halls, their cottages, their churches, and where the same blackthorn showered its petals upon them as upon us; they would tell us, surely, of the rivers, the hills, and of the island costs of England. They would tell us too of a palaces near the great city which the Romans build at a ford of the River Thames, a palace with many chambers and one lofty hall, with angel faces carved on the hammer frames, to which men resorted out of all England to speak on behalf of their fellows, a thing called “Parliament”, and from that hall went out men with fur trimmed gowns and strange caps on their heads, to judge the same judgements, and dispense the same justice, to all the people of England. One thing above all they assuredly would not forget, Lancastrian or Yorkist, squire or lord, priest of layman they would point to the kingship of England, and its emblems everywhere visible, the immemorial arms, gules, three leopards or, though quartered of late with France, azure, three fleurs de list argent and older still, the crown itself, and the scepterd awe, in which Saint Edward the Englishman still seemed to sit in his own chair to claim the allegiance of all the English. Symbol, yet source of power; prison of flesh and blood, yet incarnation of the idea; the kingship would have seemed to them, as it seems to us, to embrace and express the qualities that are peculiarly England’s. The unity of England, effortless and unconstrained, which accepts the unlimited supremacy of Crown in Parliament so naturally as not to be aware of it, the homogeneity so profound and embraced that the counties and the regions make it a hobby to discover their differences and assert their peculiarities. The continuity of England, which has brought this unity and this work gently about, in the unbroken light of the English nation over a thousand years and more is a phenomenon unique in history, the product of a specific set of circumstances like those which in biology are supposed to start by change a new line of evolution. Institutions which elsewhere are recents and artificial creations appear in England almost as works of nature, spontaneous and unquestioned. The deepest instinct of the Englishman — how the word “instinct” keeps forcing itself again and again! — Is for continuity; he never acts more freely, nor innovate more boldly than when he most is conscious of conserving of even reacting. For this continuous life of a united people in its island home spring, as from the soil of England, all that is peculiar in the gifts and the achievements of the English nation, its laws, its literate, its freedom, its self-discipline. All its impact on the outer world, in earlier colonies, in later pac Britannica, in government and lawgiving, in commerce and in thought, has glowered from impulses generated here. And this continuous and continuing life of England is symbolised and expressed, as by nothing else, by the English kingship. English it is , for all the leeks and thistles and shamrocks, the Stuarts and Hanoverians, for all the titles grafted upon it here and elsewhere, ‘her other realms and territories’, Headships of Commonwealths, and what not. The stock that received all these grafts is English, the sap that rises through it to the extremities rises from roots in English earth, the earth of England’s history. We ought well to guard, as highly to honour, the parent stem of England, and its royal talismans for we know not what branches yet that wonderful tree will have the power to put forth. The enemy is not always violence and force: them we have withstood before and can again. The peril can also be indifference and humbug, which might squander the accumulated wealth of tradition and devalue our sacred symbolism to achieve some cheap compromise or some evanescent purpose. These are not thoughts or every day, nor words for every company; but on St. George’s even, in the Society of St. George, may we not fitly think and speak them, to renew and strengthen in our selves the resolves and the loyalties which English reserve keeps otherwise and best in silence.... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here