“Sirs, I am but a nameless man,A rhymester without a home,Yet since I come of the Wessex clayAnd carry the cross of Rome,I will even answer the mighty earlThat asked of Wessex menWhy they be meek and monkish folk, And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke;What sign have we save blood and smoke?Here is my answer then.That on you is fallen the shadow,And not upon the Name;That though we scatter and though we fly,And you hang over us like the sky,You are more tired of victory,Than we are tired of shame.That though you hunt the Christian man Like a hare on the hill-side,The hare has still more heart to runThan you have heart to ride.That though all lances split on you,All swords be heaved in vain,We have more lust again to loseThan you to win again.Your lord sits high in the saddle,A broken-hearted king,But our king Alfred, lost from fame,Fallen among foes or bonds of shame,In I know not what mean trade or name,Has still some song to sing.Our monks go robed in rain and snow,But the heart of flame therein,But you go clothed in feasts and flames,When all is ice within;Nor shall all iron dooms make dumbMen wandering ceaselessly,If it be not better to fast for joyThan feast for misery.Nor monkish order onlySlides down, as field to fen,All things achieved and chosen pass,As the White Horse fades in the grass,No work of Christian men.Ere the sad gods that made your godsSaw their sad sunrise pass,The White Horse of the White Horse Vale,That you have left to darken and fail,Was cut out of the grass.Therefore your end is on you,Is on you and your kings,Not for a fire in Ely fen,Not that your gods are nine or ten,But because it is only Christian menGuard even heathen things.For our God hath blessed creation,Calling it good. I knowWhat spirit with whom you blindly band Hath blessed destruction with his hand;Yet by God's death the stars shall standAnd the small apples grow.”

“Before the gods that made the gods had seen their sunrise pass, the white horse of the white horse vale was cut out of the grass”

“Less abject but more shocking was the letter from the Founder of the Calvary Tabernacle Association in Oklahoma: Professor Einstein, I believe that every Christian in America will answer you, 'We will not give up our belief in our God and his son Jesus Christ, but we invite you, if you do not believe in the God of the people of this nation, to go back where you came from.' I have done everything in my power to be a blessing to Israel, and then you come along and with one statement from your blasphemous tongue, do more to hurt the cause of your people than all the efforts of the Christians who...”

“Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn't it? And as you split the frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and His grace toward you that that is beautiful, and a part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough.”

“I will say something still easier. Take a single flea or louse-since you tempt and mock our God with this talk about curing a lame horse-and if, after combining all the powers and concentrating all the efforts both of your good and all your supporters, you succeed in killing it in the name of free choice, you shall be victorious, your case shall be established, and we too will come at once and worship that god of yours, that wonderful killer of the louse.”

“Consider the death of the body in terms of God and His law. Your life, the life within you, encompasses everything within itself -- not only those whom you have lost but everything -- it includes God within itself. And if there is a God in your soul, then your soul is full, and there is no loss. And if there is a God, then there is love towards Him and towards people, towards those unfortunates who are in need of love.If you believe that everything that has happened to us in our life has been for our own good, then that which happens to us in our death is also for our own good.All of our misfortunes reveal to us the presence in us of the divine, of the immortal, of the self-sufficient which constitutes the foundation of our life. Death reveals to us fully our true Self. That which happens to man after his death we cannot and ought not to know. We could not live or do God's work if we knew it. If what awaits us after death were worse than what we meet with here on earth, we would prize this life even more than we do now, and there is no greater impediment to the fulfillment of God's will than concern for one's own life. If what awaits us after death were better than now, then we would scorn this life and make every effort to flee from it.We do not know what awaits us after death, but we do know one thing without any doubt, namely, that the spiritual Being into which, according to Christian teachings, I have passed over is indissoluble, eternal, free and omnipotent because this Being is God. I shall go into that Source of Love from which I came and into that which I feel is Love. 'Into thine hands I commit my spirit.' That is all we can say, yet this too is something. For the person who believes in the existence of Him from whom he came and to Whom he is going, this is all there is, and nothing more is needed.”