The Beatific Vision
Through what fierce incarnations, furled
In fire and darkness, did I go,
Ere I was worthy in the world
To see a dandelion grow?
Well, if in any woes or wars
I bought my naked right to be,
Grew worthy of the grass, nor gave
The wren, my brother, shame for me.
But what shall God not ask of him
In the last time when all is told,
Who saw her stand beside the hearth,
The firelight garbing her in gold?
poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Judgment Of England
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey
Where Wealth accumulates and Men decay."
So rang of old the noble voice in vain
O'er the Last Peasants wandering on the plain,
Doom has reversed the riddle and the rhyme,
While sinks the commerce reared upon that crime,
The thriftless towns litter with lives undone,
To whom our madness left no joy but one;
And irony that glares like Judgment Day
Sees Men accumulate and Wealth decay.
poem by G.K. Chesterton
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
1 comment - Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Art Colours
On must we go: we search dead leaves,
We chase the sunset's saddest flames,
The nameless hues that o'er and o'er
In lawless wedding lost their names.
God of the daybreak! Better be
Black savages; and grin to gird
Our limbs in gaudy rags of red,
The laughing-stock of brute and bird;
And feel again the fierce old feast,
Blue for seven heavens that had sufficed,
A gold like shining hoards, a red
Like roses from the blood of Christ.
poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Last Masquerade
A wan new garment of young green
Touched, as you turned your soft brown hair
And in me surged the strangest prayer
Ever in lover's heart hath been.
That I who saw your youth's bright page,
A rainbow change from robe to robe,
Might see you on this earthly globe,
Crowned with the silver crown of age.
Your dear hair powdered in strange guise,
Your dear face touched with colours pale:
And gazing through the mask and veil
The mirth of your immortal eyes.
poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Holy of Holies
'Elder father, though thine eyes
Shine with hoary mysteries,
Canst thou tell what in the heart
Of a cowslip blossom lies?
'Smaller than all lives that be,
Secret as the deepest sea,
Stands a little house of seeds,
Like an elfin's granary,
'Speller of the stones and weeds,
Skilled in Nature's crafts and creeds,
Tell me what is in the heart
Of the smallest of the seeds.'
'God Almighty, and with Him
Cherubim and Seraphim,
Filling all eternity -
Adonai Elohim.'
poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Gold Leaves
Lo! I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold;
Grey hairs and golden leaves cry out
The year and I are old.
In youth I sought the prince of men,
Captain in cosmic wars,
Our Titan, even the weeds would show
Defiant, to the stars.
But now a great thing in the street
Seems any human nod,
Where shift in strange democracy
The million masks of God.
In youth I sought the golden flower
Hidden in wood or wold,
But I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold.
poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Donkey
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
poem by G.K. Chesterton
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
For a War Memorial
The hucksters haggle in the mart
The cars and carts go by;
Senates and schools go droning on;
For dead things cannot die.
A storm stooped on the place of tombs
With bolts to blast and rive;
But these be names of many men
The lightning found alive.
If usurers rule and rights decay
And visions view once more
Great Carthage like a golden shell
Gape hollow on the shore,
Still to the last of crumbling time
Upon this stone be read
How many men of England died
To prove they were not dead.
poem by G.K. Chesterton
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Who Goes Home?
In the city set upon slime and loam
They cry in their parliament 'Who goes home?'
And there comes no answer in arch or dome,
For none in the city of graves goes home.
Yet these shall perish and understand,
For God has pity on this great land.
Men that are men again; who goes home?
Tocsin and trumpeter! Who goes home?
For there's blood on the field and blood on the foam
And blood on the body when Man goes home.
And a voice valedictory . . . Who is for Victory?
Who is for Liberty? Who goes home?
poem by G.K. Chesterton
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Triumph of Man
I plod and peer amid mean sounds and shapes,
I hunt for dusty gain and dreary praise,
And slowly pass the dismal grinning days,
Monkeying each other like a line of apes.
What care? There was one hour amid all these
When I had stripped off like a tawdry glove
My starriest hopes and wants, for very love
Of time and desolate eternities.
Yea, for one great hour's triumph, not in me
Nor any hope of mine did I rejoice,
But in a meadow game of girls and boys
Some sunset in the centuries to be.
poem by G.K. Chesterton from The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
