mlxvi and All Saxon Spells Againneesed

winterfilleth 14, 2026

What Heretow Weygand has called the Strife of France is over. I foredeem the Strife of Britain is about to begin. Upon this strife hinges the overliving of Christendom. Upon it hinges our own British life, and the long unbrokenness of our ways and our Rich. The whole wrath and might of the foemen must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the wye. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may stir forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall then the whole world, among them the Oned Shires, among all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the newelness of a new Dark Eld made more winster, and mayhap more drawn out, by the lights of forbraided cunning. Let us therefore gird ourselves to our bonds, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Rich and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest tide.”

winterfilleth 14, 2025

My loving folk.

We have been bidden by some that are careful of our welfare, to take heed how we go among our selves to weaponed drights, for fear of swikedom; but I tell you I do not list to live to mistrust my trothful and loving folk. Let leedhates fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have set my headliest strength and warding in the steadfast hearts and good-will of my folk; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my play and mirth, but being settled, in the midst and heat of the strife, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my folk, my worthmind and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak, wan woman; but I have the heart and maw of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul lakering that Parma or Spain, or any atheling of Europe, should dare to infare the meres of my rich; to which rather than any shame shall grow by me, I myself will take up weapons, I myself will be your heretow, doomsman, and meeder of every one of your thews in the field.

winterfilleth 14, 2024

O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

What’s he that wishes so?
My kinsman, Westmoreland? No, my fair kinsman;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enough
To do our land loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of worthmind.
God’s will! I bid thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not hungering for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my bread;
It yearns me not if men my clothings wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my longings.
But if it be a sin to hunger worthmind,
I am the most sinning soul alive.
No, lief, my kin, wish not a man from England.
God’s frith! I would not lose so great a worthmind
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather bode it, Westmoreland, through my here,
That he which hath no maw to this fight,
Let him ago; his waywrit shall be made,
And mints for withway put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s fellowred
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the winhate of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes sound home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And stir him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old eld,
Will yearly on the watch winhate his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Holiwere Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his marks,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll umbethink, with many addings,
What deeds he did that day. Then shall our names,
Hewcouth in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly umbethought.
This spell shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be umbethinkèd—
We few, we happy few, we gang of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so lowly,
This day shall lofty his standing;
And highborn men in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Holiwere Crispin’s day.

winterfilleth 14, 2023

Even though muchel reaches of Europe and many old and namecouth Riches have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the baleful workings of Nazi overlordship, we shall not flag or fall. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and brims, we shall fight with growing boldness and growing strength in the loft, we shall shield our island, whatever the toll may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never yield. And even if, which I do not for a braid believe, this island or a great deal of it were underyoked and starving, then our Rich beyond the seas, weaponed and warded by the British Fleet, would bear on the strife, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its strength and might, steps forth to the neering and the freeing of the Old.

winterfilleth 14, 2022

Methinks I am a soothsayer new beghasted
And thus outbreathing do foretell of him:
His rash wild blaze of uproar cannot last,
For overhot fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With keen feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light selfweening, unquelled sea raven,
Benoting mids, soon houths upon itself.
This kingly seld of kings, this kinyard’d isle,
This earth of wolder, this seat of Tue,
This other Eden, half-narxenwong,
This stronghold built by Erd for herself
Against smitting and the hand of wye,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This dearsome stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the wicken of a wall,
Or as a waterwall shielding to a house,
Against the ond of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this rich, this England,
This carer, this teeming womb of kingly kings,
Dreaded by their breed and namecouth by their birth,
Meer for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian thaning and true knightliness,
As is the deathraked in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world’s yiselyield, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her lise through the world,
Is now let out, I die speaking it,
Like to a dwelling or pelting croft:
England, bound in with the syereething sea
Whose stoney shore beats back the onding umbset
Of watery Nerthus, is now bound in with shame,
With black smears and rotten bookfell bonds:
That England, that was wont to overwin others,
Hath made a shameful overgo of itself.
Ah, would the shand swind with my life,
How happy then were my following death!