A Christless chivalry

[Terrance]

His poetry runs the gamut from the comic The Logical Vegetarian to dark
and serious ballads. During the dark days of 1940, when Britain stood
virtually alone against the armed might of Nazi Germany, these lines
from his 1911 Ballad of the White Horse were often quoted: 

     I tell you naught for your comfort,
     Yea, naught for your desire,
     Save that the sky grows darker yet
     And the sea rises higher.

Though not written for a scholarly audience, his biographies of authors
and historical figures like Charles Dickens and St. Francis of Assisi
often contain brilliant insights into their subjects. His "Father Brown"
mystery stories, written between 1911 and 1936, are still being read and
adapted for television. 

His politics fitted with his deep distrust of concentrated wealth and
power of any sort. Along with his friend Hilaire Belloc and in books
like the 1910 What's Wrong with the World he advocated a view called
"Distributism" that is best summed up by his expression that every man
ought to be allowed to own "three acres and a cow." Though not known as
a political thinker, his political influence has circled the world. Some
see in him the father of the "small is beautiful" movement and.....


On the Northmen he wrote:  


THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE

By G.K. Chesterton



The Northmen came about our land
A Christless chivalry:
Who knew not of the arch or pen,
Great, beautiful half-witted men
>From the sunrise and the sea.
 
Misshapen ships stood on the deep
Full of strange gold and fire,
And hairy men, as huge as sin
With horned heads, came wading in
Through the long, low sea-mire.
 
Our towns were shaken of tall kings
With scarlet beards like blood:
The world turned empty where they trod,
They took the kindly cross of God
And cut it up for wood.
 
Their souls were drifting as the sea,
And all good towns and lands
They only saw with heavy eyes,
And broke with heavy hands,
 
Their gods were sadder than the sea,
Gods of a wandering will,
Who cried for blood like beasts at night,
Sadly, from hill to hill.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dcs6mpw/gkc/books/white-horse2.html