GUTHLAC

My business was upon the barren seas
My errand was to sail to other coasts …

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— 

Had the praise of men, the songs and stories
Made of my battles, given me that permanence
They promise, or had I found within myself
The soldier’s lasting image of a soldier,
Crowland need not have become my home.
      But in the end every man dies alone,
And sword broken and helmet split,
His king fallen in some forgotten skirmish,
Nations then take their inevitable revenge
Upon his weak and leaderless people:
Armour rusts and memories fade
And all that a man ever lived for
Wealth and power, glory and a name
Are buried with his people and forgotten.
      This universal decay has turned me away
From the dying hopes of soldiers and statesmen.
And like a weary exile travelling over seas,
Lonely in spirit, doubtful of his destination,
Chilled to the bone by the ice-cold ocean,
Without a mark to steer by, dreams and seagulls
His companions, suffering the delightful memories
Of a sweet life forsworn, lamenting
The lost warmth of hall and homestead,
The lost laughter of battle-fallen friends,
We struggle across a vast and desolate ocean –
This world bereft of its familiar uses –
Seeking a lord whom no change shall corrupt
The king of a nation that shall never die
The leader of warriors whom no battle
Can ever defeat, and no death conquer.
      But who that lord is, what life he lives
We hardly know; what will be required of us,
What preparation we ought to have made
And have not, only further travelling will tell;
And as those senses that lived in their love
Of the relinquished world have withered now –
For there are no voices here, but the shriek of gulls
And groaning timbers, no scent, no blossom,
No landscape but the grey waves rolling on
Day after day, drowning all distinction –
It may be that should the land I seek
Have any features of the old, I shall not know
When I am come there, dead to the love
That recognition needs.
                                       My strength fades
Unused in this desolation; from day to day
I am threatened with death, lost to the world
I have left, the world I seek unseen.