‘Now when King Offa was alive and dead', they were all there, the funereal
gleemen: papal legate and rural dean; Merovingian car-dealers, Welsh
mercenaries; a shuffle of house-carls.
He was defunct. They were perfunctory. The ceremony stood acclaimed. The
mob received memorial vouchers and signs.
After that shadowy, thrashing midsummer hail-storm, Earth lay for a while,
the ghost-bride of livid Thor, butcher of strawberries, and the
shire-tree dripped red in the arena of its uprooting.