The Mists of Time

I sold a book this week called 'In Search of England', by H V Morton originally written in the 1920s. What gripped me was the frontispiece poem by Rudyard Kipling (below), as it refers to the legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail in Glastonbury and King Alfred, the Saxon King, who wintered on the Isle of Atheney on the Somerset Levels. So, this week, not only have I been inhabiting a magical misty landscape with the ghosts of Avalon and revisiting the much loved stories of my childhood, but also enjoying 'Time is an endless lane and life a little mile without a bend...' So much can appear to be lost in the mists of time... even the quality of time itself.

To TCT

You will remember, lady, how the morn

Came slow above the Isle of Athelney,

And all the flat lands lying to the sky

Were shrouded sea-like in a veil of grey,

As, standing on a little rounded hill,

We placed our hands upon the Holy Thorn.

Do you remember in what hopeful fear

We gazed behind us, thinking we might see

Arthur come striding through the high, bright corn,

Or Alfred resting on a Saxon spear?

And as the cold mists melted from the fields

We seemed to hear the winding of a horn.

You will remember how we walked the Vale

Through Meare and Westhay unto Godney End;

And how we said: ‘Time is an endless lane

And Life a little mile without a bend…

Behind us what? Before us, if we ran,

Might we not be in time to see the Grail?’

From 'The Stories of King Arthur', in my own collection