Pirates and pagans claw up from peat mire,
a pox on great Pax, bearing ax and red fire.
Battle-hard, bear-oiled, the bastards are drenched,
bright blood still sopping, sweet gifts for gilt Frīgg.
Sage Woden, also—star-backed silhouettes,
feet dangle from branches—requirement met.
Elm and green ash tree now prowl the world tall,
waging war as the wolves, stalking wreckage like Sköll.
Soot-smeared they sail to soil-blanketed giants—
Albion’s hills offer little defiance.
Brown-flecked, the hills, with farm and meek village,
aristocrats gone, abandoned rich villas.
Silver coin chests are interred in the mud;
Britons are left on their own to this flood.
Sword wrests short lives far away into Sheol—
raiders build wīcs and raise up their wet mead halls.
Three ships and three ships and three ever more,
Angles and Jutes and the Saxons aboard.
These isles have fallen to such savage tribes:
Who will now turn them from Death unto Life?
Hwæt! Tell of the glory of Augustine’s trek,
his journey that echoes all these years hence.
Sing, gracious bard, strike up thy fair lyre,
remember that bold one whose work never tired.
Gallant was he, and all those good men,
but first they did fear to come to their end.
Forty companions lingered there, stalled:
“Let us turn back, lest harm should befall.”
Mission half-fled, Pope Gregory begged—
How will these wandering sheep then be fed?
Do your good work, Augustine and men,
the journey with God’s help you’ve undertaken.
Toil and strange tongues and those evil spear-foes
cannot keep Christ from the people He knows.
Harvests of fruit numberless will abound
if only you sow in that green fertile ground.
Already in Kent, one turns the lost soil,
a wife in her home, alone, and still faithful.
Eve’s image opposed, she gives fruit that will last:
God’s light for those men with so bloody a past.
Strengthened by word, the band turned and walked on
through mountains and kings’ courts and forest and bog.
They boarded three ships, their hearts humming at prow,
streaming sea swirling, dawn’s light on their brows.
Monks in their course robes with bald shaven heads,
trusting the one Lord, the only true bread.
Resigned to their fates, if they all should soon die
or given more slowly, poured out over time.
The men, valiant, are together in Christ,
and Augustine fasts as the isle looms nigh.
Thanet by Wantsum, foam-flecked with grey sea:
On this little place appeared our brave forty.
“We herald from Rome with a joyous true message,
with peace ever more for those who accept it.
A kingdom unending, the living with Christ,
forgiveness of sins from He who has died.
Risen again with His arms open wide—
turn from the wicked and come, now abide.”
Wise Æthelberht, the strong lord of that land,
decreed they could stay and held out his firm hand.
Worried of magic, king stayed in the open,
fearful of rooms where sly spells could be worked in.
Our Augustine shrugged and presented the truth
out there in the field, gospel old and still new.
Just king uncertain, he gave them abode,
and in Canterbury the forty men sowed
hardy seeds scattered around in soft soil,
service and prayer and undaunted toil.
Sprouts soon shot up from the muck once so dark,
Christ everlasting in new-planted hearts.
Haley Byrd Wilt
Haley Byrd Wilt is a writer, editor, and journalist based in the D.C. area.
Her work has been published in Christianity Today, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, NOTUS, and CNN, among others. Her fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact.
