ever had been in English history. Tide after tide of invasion from Norse and Dane had come pouring in. Again and again Alfred had called his men and gone out and fought, and each time in vain. Now, as he sits on his little island in the Thames among the reeds, the news comes to him that the Danes are on their way for a fresh invasion of his land. He kneels in prayer and asks the Virgin Mother whether he ought to go out yet once more. Again and again, he tells her, he has gone out in hope, and each time in the confidence that victory would be his, and each time he has come back defeated, his men killed, and his people to sink lower after each despair than the time before. And yet, as he prays to her he says that if she will give him one word of assurance, he will go again. But only this, as she stands by his side, will she say,
"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet,
And the sea rises higher."
And there that day among the reeds under the promise only that the night was going to be blacker than he had ever known, that storms fiercer than he had ever breasted were coming, Alfred rises up to do what he had never done under the old assurance of easy victory,
