Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/731

 INCLUSIVE EDITION, 1885-1918 713

Quick to turn at their pleasure, cruel to cross in their mood,

And set on paths of their choosing as the hogs of Andred's Wood.

Laws they made in the Witan the laws of flaying and fine

Common, loppage and pannage, the theft and the track of kine

Statutes of tun and of market for the fish and the malt and the meal

The tax on the Bramber packhorse and the tax on the Hast- ings keel.

Over the graves of the Druids and under the wreck of Rome

Rudely but surely they bedded the plinth of the days to come.

Behind the feet of the Legions and before the Norseman's ire

Rudely but greatly begat they the framing of State and Shire.

Rudely but deeply they laboured, and their labour stands till now,

If we trace on our ancient headlands the twist of their eight- ox plough. . ..

There came a king from Hamtun, by Bosenham he came,

He filled Use with slaughter, and Lewes he gave to flame.

He smote while they sat in the Witan sudden he smote and sore,

That his fleet was gathered at Selsea ere they mustered at Cymen's Ore.

Blithe went the Saxons to battle, by down and wood and mere,

But thrice the acorns ripened ere the western mark was clear.

Thrice was the beechmast gathered, and the Beltane fires burned

Thrice, and the beeves were salted thrice ere the host returned

They drove that king from Hamtun, by Bosenham o'er- thrown,

Out of Rugnor to Wilton they made his land their own.

Camps they builded at Gilling, at Basing and Alresford,

But wrath abode in the Saxons from cottar to overlord.

Wrath at the weary war-game, at the foe that snapped and ran