Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“ Loud with the many-throated roar, the word went forward yet.
The song of wheels passed into it, the roaring and the smoke
The riddle of the want and wage, the fogs that burn and choke.
The breaking of the girths of gold, the needs that creep and swell,
The strengthening hope, the dazing light, the deafening evangel,
Through kingdoms dead and empires damned, through changes without cease,
With earthquake, chaos, born and fed, rose,—and the word was "Peace." ”

“ OTHER loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack,
But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon my back,
Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret,
Still, my hope is all before me: for I cannot play it yet.
In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath ere let fall,
In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;
Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame,
Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name. ”

“ That great green sunset God shall make three days after I die.
When all the lights are lost and done, when all the skies are broken,
Above the ruin of the stars my soul shall sit in state,
With a brain made rich, with the irrevocable sunsets,
And a closed heart happy in the fullness of a fate.
So you have gained the golden crowns and grasped the golden weather,
The kingdoms and the hemispheres that all men buy and sell,
But I will lash the leaping drum and swing the flaring feather,
For the light of seven heavens that are lost to me like hell. ”

“ They have burnt the wheat and gathered the chaff,
And we that have fought them, we that have watched them,
Have we at least not cause to laugh?
Never so low at least we stumbled—
Dead we have been but not so dead
As these that live on the life they squandered,
As these that drink of the blood they shed.
We never boasted the thing we blundered,
We never flaunted the thing that fails,
We never quailed from the living laughter,
To howl to the dead who tell no tales. ”

“ And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon. ”

“ The rope of the rich is long and long—
The longest of hangmen's cords;
But the kings and crowds are holding their breath,
In a giant shadow o'er all beneath
Where God stands holding the scales of Death
Between the cattle and Swords.
Haply the lords that hire and lend,
The lowest of all men's lords,
Who sell their kind like kine at a fair,
Will find no head of their cattle there;
But faces of men where cattle were:
Faces of men—and Swords. ”

“ Is lazy with the love of good—
⁠ (But ready are you, and ready am I,
⁠If the battle blow and the guns go by;
⁠For we are for all men under the sun,
⁠And they are against us every one;
⁠And the men that hate herd all together,
⁠To pride and gold, and the great white feather,
⁠And the thing is graven in star and stone
⁠That the men who love are all alone.) ”

“ Paint mighty things, paint paltry things, paint silly things or sweet.
But if men break the Charter, you may slay them in the street.
And if you paint one post for them, then . . . but you know it well,
You paint a harlot's face to drag all heroes down to hell."
ALL TOGETHER
Almighty God to all mankind on Christmas Day said He:
⁠"I rent you from the old red hills and, rending, made you free.
There was charter, there vas challenge; in a blast of breath I gave;
You can be all things other; you cannot be a slave. ”

“ Where naked crests fight to achieve the skies,
Where no grain grows nor wine, no fruitful thing,
Only big words and starry blasphemies.
But you have clothed with mercy like a moss
The barren violence of its primal wars,
Sterile although they be and void of rule,
You know my shapeless crags have loved the stars. ”

“ The pale leaf falls in pallor, but the green leaf turns to gold;
We that have found it good to be young shall find it good to be old;
Life that bringeth the marriage bell, the cradle and the grave,
Life that is mean to the mean of heart, and only brave to the brave. ”

“ It were something, though you went from me to-day.
To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky. ”

“ Will someone take me to a pub?
I know where Men can still be found,
Anger and clamorous accord,
And virtues growing from the ground,
And fellowship of beer and board,
And song, that is a sturdy cord,
And hope, that is a hardy shrub,
And goodness, that is God's last word—
Will someone take me to a pub? ”

“ Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung ”

“ Fond, impious thought, if I were Walter Long—
If I could water sell like molten gold,
And make grown people do as they are told,
If over private fields and wastes as wide
As a Greek city for which heroes died,
I owned the houses and the men inside—
If all this hung on one thin thread of habit
I would not revolutionize a rabbit. ”

“ The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty;
Likelier the barricades shall blare
Slaughter below and smoke above,
And death and hate and hell declare
That men have found a thing to love. ”

“ And the wise men draw near in the twilight,
⁠Who are weary of learning and art,
And the face of the tyrant is darkened,
⁠His spirit is torn,
For a new King is enthroned; yea, the sternest,
⁠A child is born. ”

“ Shall never thirst again.
The wine they praise in Paradise
They make in Ponterey,
The purple wine of Paradise,
But we have better at the price;
It's wine they praise in Paradise,
it's cider that they pray. ”

“ Through the cornfield's gleam and the cottage shade,
They wait unwearied, the young and old,
Mother for child and man for maid,
For a love that once was told.
The hair grows grey under thatch or slates,
The eyes grow dim behind lattice panes,
The earth-race wait as the old earth waits,
And the hope in the heart remains. ”

“ Call upon the wheels, master, call upon the wheels,
They are deaf to demagogues, deaf to crude appeals;
Are our hands our own, master?—how the doctors doubt!
Are our legs our own, master? wheels can run without—
Prove the points are delicate—they will understand.
All the wheels are loyal ”

“ I HAVE come forth alive from the land of purple and poison and glamour,
Where the charm is strong as the torture, being chosen to change the mind;
Torture of wordless dance and wineless feast without clamour,
Palace hidden in palace, garden with garden behind;
Women veiled in the sun, or bare as brass in the shadows,
And the endless eyeless patterns where each thing seems an eye. . . . ”

“ That we may stray from it.
The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say. ”

“ And you will gild with grease
The papers, the employers, the police,
And vomit up the void your windy words
To your New Christ; who bears no whip of cords
For them that traffic in the doves of peace. ”

“ This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star. ”

“ The dumb shut doors of Paradise,
⁠God flung the flaming sword.
It burns the hand that holds it
⁠More than the skull it scores;
It doubles like a snake and stings,
Yet he in whose hand it swings
He is the most masterful of things,
⁠A scorner of the stars. ”

“ Let a new world throb and stream,
Seers and makers, build it well."
Strove the cunning men and strong,
But a little and they cry,
"Lord, mayhap we are but clay,
And we cannot know the why,"
And the wise men doubt to-day. ”

“ To stand one hour in the sunlight
⁠Only to say her name.
"Falls through her hair the sunshine
⁠In showers; it touches, see,
Her high bright cheeks in turning;
⁠Ah, Elfin Company,
"The world is hot and cruel,
⁠We are yeary of heart and hand,
But the world is more full of glory:
⁠Than you can understand." ”

“ Or secret as that wind without a chart
⁠Whereon did the wild leaves of Sibyl go.
O light uplifted from all mortal knowing,
⁠Send back a little of that glimpse of thee,
That of its glory I may kindle glowing
⁠One tiny spark for all men yet to be. ”

“ We too are weak with pride and shame,
We too are as our foemen are.
Yea, we are mad as they are mad,
Yea, we are blind as they are blind,
Yea, we are very sick and sad
Who bring good news to all mankind. ”

“ Then spake the third of the Wise Men; the wisest of the three:
"We may not with the widest lives enlarge His liberty,
Whose wings are wider than the world. It is not He, but we.
"We say not He has more to gain, but we have more to lose. ”

“ You are the Fool that charged a windmill. Still,
The Miller is a Knave; and was afraid.
Lay down your sword. Ruin will know her own.
Let each small statesman sow his weak wild oat,
Or turn his coat to decorate his coat,
Or take the throne and perish by the throne. ”

“ We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.
The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone. ”

“ Shall crawl from caverns overjoyed,
⁠Jackal and snake and carrion crow.
And perched above the vulture's eggs,
⁠Reversed upon its hideous head,
A blue-faced ape shall wave its legs
⁠To tell the world that he is dead. ”

“ Here stand I for a sign.
Though earth be filled with waters dark,
My cup is filled with wine.
Tell to the trembling priests that here
Under the deluge rod,
One nameless, tattered, broken man
Stood up, and drank to God. ”

“ This little house of holm and fir
God built before the stars for her.
Here in the fallen leaves is furled
Her secret centre of the world.
We sit and feel in dusk and dun
The stars swing round us like a sun. ”

“ Luke unto the painters on Christmas Day he said:
⁠"See that the robes are white you dare to dip in gold and red;
For only gold the kings can give, and only blood the saints;
And his high task grows perilous that mixes them in paints. ”

“ Nor look on the lands of morning
⁠Where deeds at last are done?
Where men shall remember the Mountain
⁠When truth forgets the plain—
And walk in the way of the Mountain
⁠That did not fail in vain ”

“ O GOD of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride. ”

“ While we two ride together?
The fires that over Sodom fell
Would be but sultry weather.
Beyond all ends to all men given
Our race is far and fell,
We shall but wash our feet in heaven,
And warm our hands in hell. ”

“ And the niggards that dare not give are glutted,
⁠And the feeble that dare not fail are strong,
So while the City of Toil is gutted,
⁠I sit in the saddle and sing my song.
⁠For we that fight till the world is free,
⁠We have no comfort in victory ”

“ Lest man by chance should look at me and see me;
Lest men should ask what madman made me lord
Of English ploughshares and the English sword;
Lest men should mark how sleepy is the nod
That drills the dreadful images of God! ”

“ TRANSLATION FROM DU BELLAY
HAPPY, who like Ulysses or that lord
Who raped the fleece, returning full sage,
With usage and the world's wide reason stored,
With his own kin can wait the end of age. ”

“ And I saw her head uplifted
Like a lily to the Lord.
Nought is lost, but all transmuted,
Ears are sealed, yet eyes have seen;
Saw her smiles (O soul be worthy!) ,
Saw ber tears (O heart be clean!) . ”

“ Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate ”

“ And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;
Rationalists are growing rational—
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray
So secret that the very sky seems small—
I think I will not hang myself to-day. ”

“ The clouds grow dark;—the down-rush has begun.
—It comes, it comes, as holy darkness can,
Black as with banners, ban and arriere-ban;
A falling laughter all the valley fills,
Deep as God's thunder and the thirst of man:
(A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills) . ”

“ Therefore to you my thanks, O throne,
⁠O thousandfold and frozen folk,
For whose cold frenzies all your own
⁠The Battle of the Rivers broke;
Who have no faith a man could mourn,
⁠Nor freedom any man desires ”