Classic Poem

Splintered my lance and hacked my shield;
With blood my byrny-rings are red:
My heart is as a battlefield,
Strewn with the dying and the dead:
And yet I cannot, will not yield,
For by a Vision I am led.

Still do my tattered banners stream
O'er muddy trench and bloody fosse,
And still do Love and Faith redeem
Defeat and peril, pain and loss:
For I am following a Dream
That dies for men upon a Cross.