Idylls of the King

From the Ashes a Fire Shall be Woken

Strike for the King and die! and if thou diest,
The King is King, and ever wills the highest.
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand!  Let the King reign.

Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May!
Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day!
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand!  Let the King reign.

The King will follow Christ, and we the King
In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand!  Let the King reign.

- The Coming of Arthur, Lord Alfred Tennyson

I have left England after living there for the better part of seven months.

I spent my last night in Logres on the top of Glastonbury Tor, watching a golden Sun set down in the West over the fields of Somerset while light rain fell down on our heads.

They say Glastonbury is the legendary Isle of Avalon. They say Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury after the resurrection of Christ and planted a church there, the first church of England. Upon its ruins was built the Lady Chapel of Glastonbury Abbey.

You can still drink from the sacred white and red springs said to have sprung from the sweat and blood of Christ, brought to England by St. Joseph.

Some legends even say that Christ himself walked here as a young man, on a voyage with his uncle Joseph who was then only a merchant.

I have never been in such a serene place as I was that night under St. Michael’s Tower on the Tor. There you could still see and feel the beauty and soul of Logres, and of Old England, and the state of things did not seem so grim.

I felt that same untarnished spirit walking the River Thames in Oxford, the countryside that inspired so much in Tolkien. I felt it in the Cathedrals at Westminster, Salisbury, and Winchester. I felt it walking over hill-forts and barrows in Wiltshire. I felt it walking the Roman city of Bath, and in the small church of St. John I attended there. In the green hills of Cornwall, in the little villages of the Cotswolds, in the stone rings of Avebury, on the moors of the Peak District, there was something powerful still alive.

That England, I loved with all my heart.

And I wish that were all there was to it. But England is bathed in twilight now.

The beauty of this special island is marred by godlessness, sloth, a lack of will to strive towards anything higher. Its cities are grim places to walk, and its country towns may as well be retirement villages. I cannot put it any other way than that the island and its people feel as if they are asleep.

Beautiful villages almost deserted, parish churches crumbling and given no aid by the state Church of England, culture-less youth, migrants rampant, men without chests everywhere who seem to not care, as long as they can watch the rugby. The ruins of a greater age crumbling along the wayside.

It truly is as if this island is waiting for King Arthur to return.

From an alley in Glastonbury

But I do not know if the melancholy of Britain is a bad thing. Because a people that are sleeping, or perhaps dreaming, are still dangerous. Only those that are sleeping can be awoken. The English are a culturally defeated people, as are the Celts that they share their island with. But a defeated and melancholic people remember, a small part of them will always remember and hold fast.

And the English, and the Britons, and the Scots- who despite their centuries long war, in the face of the greater enemy we face today, are brothers - the people of this island, they remember.

They remember King Arthur, and the glory of their Empire, and Robin Hood and his Merry Men hidden in forests and moors. They remember good King Richard, and William Wallace, and the horse twins Hengst and Horsa, and the rule of Alfred the Great.

I saw that many of the English had forgotten who they were and are, and it was a sad sight. But the ones I know who remember, they are fierce in their memory. Like in other Western and Northern European nations, there is a smoldering fire under this veneer of sleep.

Here, things are grim on the surface, but the roots run old and deep. I would not call England a particularly bright place - it is Merrie Olde England no longer, except in a few surviving refuges. But it is full of memory.

And so I have more hope for England than for many seemingly happier places, like many Mediterranean nations where the people have forgotten themselves, but worst of all, are complacent with what they have become. They carry no bitterness, no aching memory of what was and what could be. You may say they seem happier, and they may indeed be, day to day. But their roots have run cold.

They will not be the ones to restore Europe and Christendom. They do not have the long-suffering cold will, the potential to ignite like the English still do.

As Kipling wrote-

 It was not part of their blood,
    It came to them very late
  With long arrears to make good,
    When the English began to hate. 

  They were not easily moved, 
    They were icy-willing to wait 
  Till every count should be proved, 
    Ere the English began to hate.  

  Their voices were even and low, 
    Their eyes were level and straight. 
  There was neither sign nor show, 
    When the English began to hate.  

  It was not preached to the crowd, 
    It was not taught by the State. 
  No man spoke it aloud, 
    When the English began to hate.  

  It was not suddenly bred, 
    It will not swiftly abate, 
  Through the chill years ahead, 
    When Time shall count from the date 
    That the English began to hate.

- The Beginnings, Rudyard Kipling

The spirit of England is sleeping, like Arthur in the vale of Avalon, but it is not dead.

And I know the people of England have some strength left in them, though it may lie hidden a while longer. I know this beautiful land that once sprung the greatest civilization on Earth will not be so easily defeated.

Some say the English have been pushed to such an extent of cultural humiliation, that if they were ever to recover, it would have happened by now. I’d be careful making such a claim.

And despite the pervasive bittersweetness that marked my time there, I love England. I loved the people I met there, and the people I went there with, and I could put no price on seeing the land that I my family came from. I have never been so moved by a place.

I was moved by the remnants of its imperial glory, by the agrarian beauty of its countryside, in its little forests and streams, in the simple dignity of the people that still remember what it means to be English. Many times I felt I was back home in the Southern United States, walking through some old country town.

And I will return at some point. I have yet to walk the hills of the Lake District, or see the Saxon castles of Northumbria, or climb the mountains of Wales and Scotland. And I will certainly return to the green hills of Somerset, Wiltshire, and Oxfordshire again. I do not leave this island satisfied- I have unfinished business in Logres.

But after my last night on the Tor in Avalon, the holiest ground in England, I do leave with a sense of peace and of hope.

I love England despite the state of its surface.

Because England is not the cultural rot in the streets, or the goblin class of politicians wearing unearned crowns, or the crumbling monuments and villages.

England is what still lies unshaken beneath.

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”