April 16, 1903

"An Epic of Staffordshire" is a long poem in a book titled Verses: Wise and Otherwise (1898). The author was Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (April 9, 1860 to June 22, 1929). She and her sister both wrote novels of some acclaim. Their father Henry Hartley Fowler was the first Methodist to be raised to the peerage. They all were Wulfrunians. That lovely word refers to residents of Wolverhampton, an area in the English midlands, the same midlands which includes Staffordshire and once, Mercia. Ellen married on April 16, 1903 Alfred Felkin. More biographical information is available here.

My interest in her poetry, and we won't quote too much, is the sense of history it reveals in those living a century ago.  That point is lost if we don't appreciate how modern most people were already, by the late 19th century. For instance Fowler uses this example in a later novel, which shows an appreciation for science:

[I]t was a superstition of our great-grandmothers that if a cat sneezed it was a premonition that colds were coming to all the household; now we know that colds are infectious, and can be caught from animals. (Ten Degrees Backward, 1915).

"An Epic of Staffordshire" is excerpted:
......

As in manhood's golden day we look back on childish play
With a half disdainful smile,
So these wiser spirits wonder that they rent the world asunder,
And believed it worth their while.

Once again it came to pass that the Danes returned, alas!
To the sunny Mercian land;
And their track with blood was red, and their path
was strewn with dead,
.....

Then the Saxons met the Danes in the pleasant Mercian plains,
And they swore the Danes should yield;
So they smote them hip and thigh till they made them fall or fly
At the fight of Wodensfield.

And the sunlight gleamed like gold on the armour of the bold
At the dawning of the day;
And the night-clouds hung like lead o'er the armies of the dead
At the ending of the fray...

For the Saxons showed no quarter, and the air was dark with slaughter,
And the fight was grim and great;
And three Kings to death were done ere the setting of the sun
On that fearful field of fate.

......

All their poets told the story of the hard-won Saxon glory,
And the conquest of the foe;
...
Near a thousand years ago.

There is little difference now 'twixt the laurel-circled brow
And the fallen in the fight: '
Tis among the things of old, like the tales that have been told
Or the watches of the night.

For the victors from their gladness and the vanquished from their madness
Were alike compelled to cease,
When Death called them to their reckoning, and, his ghostly finger beckoning,
Bade them pass away in peace.

They were mighty men and brave, and they earned a soldier's grave
Having nobly served their day;
Yet each servant meek and lowly in the kingdom of the holy
Shall be greater far than they:

For the man that takes a city, undeterred by pain and pity,
Like a lion's whelp may be;
But the man that rules his spirit shall be held of higher merit
And of truer worth than he.

Now their rage and hate are over as they lie beneath the clover,
And they fret and fume no more: 

Danish sailors, Saxon sages, in the silence of the ages
Never hear the sound of war.

For their rest is long and sweet, and they feel nor cold nor heat,
.....
While the daffodilly waves o'er the old, forgotten graves,
Where they slumber in the shade.

There they patiently must lie while the sunny days pass by,
....
Till the angel-sounded warning of the Resurrection morning
Shall awake them out of sleep.

Still their spirits haunt the shadows of the oak-trees in the meadows
Where their knell the bluebell tolls:
And we humbly pray that Heaven,
Whereby sinners are forgiven,
May have mercy on their souls!

We see Fowler's spirit is clearly supported with a religious structure, one which is showing stress as we deduce from the bland cliches.  Yet there is a sense in her lines of a distant vista of some liveliness. A genuine  thought is what lies buried in the lines of Ellen Fowler, a sentiment forgettable, yes, but one once vivid and fresh. And what did she have but religion to tamp down the sod of time?