35 pages • 1-hour read
The Ballad of the White Horse
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
In this literary ballad the length of the stanzas ranges from four to six lines. Each type of stanza has its own distinct form. The four-line stanza, also known as a quatrain, alternates four- and three-beat stresses. For example, from Book I:
They bred like birds in English woods, (4)
They rooted like the rose, (3)
When Alfred came to Athelney, (4)
To hide him from their bows (3) (Lines 108-11).
The meter here is iambic, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, although overall the meter of the ballad is flexible, with many variations on the basic iambic beat.
The five-line stanzas have their own distinctive structure. The first line, a tetrameter, contains four stressed syllables; the second line, a trimeter, contains three; lines 3 and 4 contain four stresses, and line 5 contains three stresses. It can be represented thus: 4,3,4,4,3:
Our towns were shaken of tall kings (4)
With scarlet beards like blood: (3)
The world turned empty where they trod, (4)
They took the kindly cross of God (4)
And cut it up for wood (3) (Book 1, Lines 91-95).
In terms of the number of stresses, or beats, the six-line stanzas usually follow a pattern of 4,3,4,4,4,3:
The roof leaned gaping to the grass, (4)
As a monstrous mushroom lies; (3)
Echoing and empty seemed the place; (4)
But opened in a little space (4)
A great grey woman with scarred face (4)
And strong and humbled eyes (3) (Book IV, Lines 59-64).
In other words, lines 2 and 6 are always shorter than the other four lines—trimeters rather than tetrameters.
Rhyme
Each type of stanza has its own rhyme scheme, to which Chesterton strictly adheres. In four-line stanzas, line 2 rhymes with line 4. The other lines do not rhyme. This is traditionally how the ballad stanza has rhymed. The rhyme scheme can thus be presented as ABCB:
His harp was carved and cunning,
His sword prompt and sharp,
And he was gay when he held the sword,
Sad when he held the harp (Bk II, Lines 212-15).
In five-line stanzas, the rhyme scheme is ABCCB, as shown below:
For the White Horse knew England
When there was none to know;
He saw the first oar break or bend,
He saw heaven fall and the world end,
O God, how long ago (Bk 1, Lines 13-17).
In six-line stanzas, the rhyme scheme is ABCCCB:
With eyes of owl and feet of fox,
Full of all thoughts he went;
He marked the tilt of the pagan camp,
The paling of pine, the sentries' tramp,
And the one great stolen altar-lamp
Over Guthrum in his tent (Bk IV, Lines 7-12).
Alliteration
Alliteration, a poetic device consisting of the repetition of initial consonants in adjacent or nearby words, is almost ubiquitous in the ballad. The following list of alliterative words is taken from the first few lines of each book. “[S]hapeless shroud” (Dedication, Line 3); “hoary on the hill” (Bk 1, Line 8); Alfred “hardened his heart with hope” (Line 64); “windy wastes” (Bk II, Line 1); “mass-book mildewed” (Bk III, Line 3); “night’s noises” (Bk IV, Line 5); “rent and rolled” (Bk V, Line 4); “foeman forth” (Bk V, Line 6); “dust and din” (Bk VI, Line 3); “Patiently push” (Bk VII, Line 5); “pagan people” (Bk VIII, Line 7). Dozens upon dozens more examples could be found.
The ballad should ideally be read aloud, which would make the alliterations most effective. Alliteration also aligns the poem with earlier epic and narrative poetry, such as the Old English epic Beowulf and Middle English narrative poems such as Piers Plowman. It thus gives the ballad the kind of old-world authenticity that the poet seeks.
Simile
A simile compares two unlike things in a way that brings out a similarity between them. Similes can usually be recognized by the use of the words “like” or “as.” The epic simile is an extended simile, often used by Homer and other writers of epics. In Book VI, Eldred in battle is described by several similes. “His face like the sanguine sunset” (Line 21); “His hand like a windy hammer-stroke (Line 23). This is followed by several epic similes, which compare Eldred to a plague, a sandstorm, and an invading force:
As the tall white devil of the Plague
Moves out of Asian skies,
With his foot on a waste of cities
And his head in a cloud of flies;
Or purple and peacock skies grow dark
With a moving locust-tower;
Or tawny sand-winds tall and dry,
Like hell's red banners beat and fly,
When death comes out of Araby,
Was Eldred in his hour (Book VI, Lines 26-35).
Two more similes follow in quick succession: “he moved like a massacre (Line 36); “he strode like a pestilence” (Line 40).
Eldred’s death is also described with an epic simile, comparing the falling man to a collapsed battle-tower:
And he stood with the face of a dead man,
Stood a little, and swayed—
Then fell, as falls a battle-tower,
On smashed and struggling spears.
Cast down from some unconquered town
That, rushing earthward, carries down
Loads of live men of all renown—
Archers and engineers (Book VI, Lines 83-90).
When Elf sings to the harp, a simile expresses how the Danish warriors respond to it: “The heart of each man moved in him / Like a babe buried alive” (Book III, Lines 146-47), which suggests they are capable of a deep emotional response to the song but they are also undeveloped in that area and not used to expressing such things.
Many more similes compare people and abstract entities to other living forms and objects: “The King went gathering Wessex men / As grain out of the chaff” (Book II, Lines 13-14. Guthrum sings that “The soul is like a lost bird” (Book IV, Line 259). In Book V, and Colan “was hung with raiment / Tattered like autumn leaves (Book V, Lines 197-98), and “the Earls of the Great Army / Lay like a long half moon” (Lines 368-69). In Ogier’s battle against Mark, when he is trapped under Mark’s shield, Ogier “writhed under his shield / Like a tortoise in his dome” (Book VI, Lines 193-94), and in Alfred’s vision of the Virgin Mary, “Her dress was soft as western sky” (Book VII, Line 197).
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