The King's Task by Rudyard Kipling — Read

After the sack of the City, when Rome was sunk to a name, / In the years that the lights were darkened, or ever St. Wilfrid came, / Low on the borders of Britain (the ancient poets sing) / Between the Cliff and the Forest there ruled a Saxon King. / Stubborn all were his people from cottar to overlord -- / Not to be cowed by the cudgel, scarce to be schooled by the sword; / 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 market for the fish and the malt and the meal -- / The tax on the Bramber packhorse and the tax on the Hastings 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'erthrown, / 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 / Wolf-wise feigning and flying, and wolf-wise snatching his man. / Wrath for their spears unready, their levies new to the blades -- / Shame for the helpless sieges and the scornful ambuscades. / At hearth and tavern and market, wherever the tale was told, / Shame and wrath had the Saxons because of their boasts of old. / And some would drink and deny it, and some would pray and atone; / But the most part, after their anger, avouched that the sin was their own. / Wherefore, girding together, up to the Witan they came, / And as they had shouldered their bucklers so did they shoulder their blame. / For that was the wont of the Saxons (the ancient poets sing), / And first they spoke in the Witan and then they spoke to the King: / 'Edward King of the Saxons, thou knowest from sire to son, / 'One is the King and his People -- in gain and ungain one.