Will they come through the darkness? Will they come?

Or screaming with the dawning of the sun?

Is it time to fire the beacon?

Lest men’s resolve should weaken

Should we tell the boy to beat the battle drum?

 

Does that eastern glow mean Jarrow’s over-run

And presages the stinking Viking scum?

To visit us with thunder

To pillage, rape and plunder

Returning thence to Norway whence they come?

 

Will they nail our Christian priests to churches doors?

Will they take our women for their Saxon whores?

Our children as their slaves

Then sail across the waves

To raise them as a Viking for their wars?

 

In Northumbria our ancestors have dwelt

We took it from the Walha and the Celt

They were harried and were pressed

To their wastelands in the West

To no-one has a Saxon ever knelt.

 

But has the waning of the Sais begun?

Do we see the setting of our sun?

Has wyrd decreed our course

To flee before the Norse

Or will we stand like Saxons if they come?

If they come.