“But whatso hap at the end of the world,
Where Nothing is struck and sounds,
It is not, by Thor, these monkish men
These humbled Wessex hounds—

“Not this pale line of Christian hinds
This one white string of men,
Shall keep us back from the end of the world,
And the things that happen then.

“It is not Alfred’s dwarfish sword,
Nor Egbert’s pigmy crown,
Shall stay us now that descend in thunder,
Rending the realms and the realms thereunder,
Down through the world and down.”

—THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE:
VI - THE SLAYING OF THE CHIEFS,
G. K. CHESTERTON