Excerpt from The Ballad of the White Horse His ballad needs no historical notes, for the simple reason that it does not profess to be historical. All of it that is not frankly fictitious, as in any prose romance about the past, is meant to emphasize tradition rather than history. King Alfred is not a legend in the sense that King Arthur may be a legend; that is, in the sense that he may possibly be a lie. But King Alfred is a legend in this broader and more human sense, that the legends are the most important things about him. The cult of Alfred was a popular cult, from the darkness of the ninth century to the deepening twilight of the twentieth. It isvi ballad OF the white horse. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Ballad of the White Horse is one of the last great epic poems in the English language. On the one hand it describes King Alfredಙs battle against the Danes in 878. On the other hand it is a timeless allegory about the ongoing battle between Christianity and the forces of nihilistic heathenism. Filled with colorful characters, thrilling battles and mystical visions, it is as lively as it is profound. Chesterton incorporates brilliant imagination, atmosphere, moral concern, chronological continuity, wisdom and fancy. He makes his stanzas reverberate with sound, and hurries his readers into the heart of the battle. This deluxe volume is the definitive edition of the poem. It exactly reproduces the 1928 edition with Robert Austinಙs beautiful woodcuts, and includes a thorough introduction and wonderful endnotes by Sister Bernadette Sheridan, from her 60 years researching the poem. Illustrated.

When Caesar's sun fell out of the skyAnd whoso hearkened rightCould only hear the plungingOf the nations in the night.When the ends of the earth came marching inTo torch and cresset gleam.And the roads of the world that lead to RomeWere filled with faces that moved like foam, Like faces in a dream.And men rode out of the eastern lands, Broad river and burning plain;Trees that are Titan flowers to see, And tiger skies, striped horribly, With tints of tropic rain.Where Ind's enamelled peaks ariseAround that inmost one, Where ancient eagles on its brink, Vast as archangels, gather and drinkThe sacrament of the sun.And men brake out of the northern lands, Enormous lands alone, Where a spell is laid upon life and lustAnd the rain is changed to a silver dustAnd the sea to a great green stone.And a Shape that moveth murkilyIn mirrors of ice and night, Hath blanched with fear all beasts and birds, As death and a shock of evil words5Blast a man's hair w

Continuing a two-year program to bring back twenty-two Maurice Sendak treasures long out of print, our second season of publication highlights one of the most successful author-illustrator pairings of all time. A pioneer of great children's literature, Ruth Krausspublished more than thirty books for children during a career that spanned forty years. Krauss and Sendak collaborated on eight books, and we are delighted to reintroduce four of these gems in brand-new editions, together with a favorite Maurice Sendak picture book.

This collection contains, The Ballad of the White Horse by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Andromeda and Other Poems by Charles Kingsley, Ballads by William Makepeace Thackeray, Don Juan by Lord George Gordon Byron, Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses by Thomas Hardy, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poetical Sketches by William Blake, Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces by Thomas Hardy, Selected Poems by William Blake, Selected Poems by Robert Browning, Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde, The Four Zoas by William Blake, THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN by Geoffrey Chaucer, The Poetical Works of John Dryden by John Dryden, Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses by Thomas Hardy, Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer, Wessex Poems and Other Verses by Thomas Hardy, Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde, Eugene Onegin by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin,

G. K. Chesterton was a literary giant of his age. With an exceptional intellect, he wrote about history, politics, economics, philosophy, social and literary criticism, and theology. He published essays, novels, biographies, short stories, and poetry, and the Christian classics Heretics, Orthodoxy, and The Everlasting Man, which C. S. Lewis credits as instrumental in his conversion to Christianity. With much of his finest material out of print or hard to find, modern readers have long needed a standard collection of his best thoughts. Kevin Belmonte’s The Quotable Chesterton brings them to you arranged alphabetically by topic, with complete original source documentation. There are entries from Adventure to Cheese, Politics to Émile Zola, interspersed with essays about Chesterton’s life and times. Hundreds of passages drawn from Chesterton’s fiction, poetry, essays, and other books showcase a man the New York Times hailed as a “brilliant English essayist” and George Bernard Shaw called a “colossal genius.” Endorsements: “There isn’t a writer who gets me pacing and smiling and thinking like G.K. Chesterton. His every paradigm shift is an adjustment to my mental compass, and so a gift.” —DONALD MILLER, author of the New York Times bestsellers A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and Blue Like Jazz “Over the years, I have delivered thousands of lectures, speeches, talks, and sermons; I have written hundreds of articles, essays, books, and reviews; it is an exceedingly rare occasion when any of them should fail to contain the words ‘Chesterton once said.’ Kevin Belmonte here reveals that fountain of wit, wisdom, and wonder, G.K. Chesterton, in all his irresistibly, irrepressibly, quotable splendor.”—GEORGE GRANT, Pastor, Parish Presbyterian Church, and Chancellor, New College Franklin