Complete Works of G K Chesterton, page 381
For your wages, take my body,
That at least to you I leave;
Set the sulky plumes upon it,
Bid the grinning mummers grieve.
Stand in silence: steep your raiment
In the night that hath no star;
Don the mortal dress of devils,
Blacker than their spirits are.
Since ye may not, of your mercy,
Ere I lie on such a hearse,
Hurl me to the living jackals
God hath built for sepulchres.
AN ALLIANCE
This is the weird of a world-old folk,
That not till the last link breaks,
Not till the night is blackest,
The blood of Hengist wakes.
When the sun is black in heaven,
The moon as blood above,
And the earth is full of hatred,
This people tells its love.
In change, eclipse, and peril,
Under the whole world’s scorn,
By blood and death and darkness
The Saxon peace is sworn;
That all our fruit be gathered,
And all our race take hands,
And the sea be a Saxon river
That runs through Saxon lands.
Lo! not in vain we bore him;
Behold it! not in vain,
Four centuries’ dooms of torture
Choked in the throat of Spain,
Ere priest or tyrant triumph —
We know how well — we know —
Bone of that bone can whiten,
Blood of that blood can flow.
Deep grows the hate of kindred,
Its roots take hold on hell;
No peace or praise can heal it,
But a stranger heals it well.
Seas shall be red as sunsets,
And kings’ bones float as foam,
And heaven be dark with vultures,
The night our son comes home.
THE ANCIENT OF DAYS
A child sits in a sunny place,
Too happy for a smile,
And plays through one long holiday
With balls to roll and pile;
A painted wind-mill by his side
Runs like a merry tune,
But the sails are the four great winds of heaven,
And the balls are the sun and moon.
A staring doll’s-house shows to him
Green floors and starry rafter,
And many-coloured graven dolls
Live for his lonely laughter.
The dolls have crowns and aureoles,
Helmets and horns and wings.
For they are the saints and seraphim,
The prophets and the kings.
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.
THE EARTH’S SHAME
Name not his deed: in shuddering and in haste
We dragged him darkly o’er the windy fell:
That night there was a gibbet in the waste,
And a new sin in hell.
Be his deed hid from commonwealths and kings,
By all men born be one true tale forgot;
But three things, braver than all earthly things,
Faced him and feared him not.
Above his head and sunken secret face
Nested the sparrow’s young and dropped not dead.
From the red blood and slime of that lost place
Grew daisies white, not red.
And from high heaven looking upon him,
Slowly upon the face of God did come
A smile the cherubim and seraphim
Hid all their faces from.
VANITY
A wan sky greener than the lawn,
A wan lawn paler than the sky.
She gave a flower into my hand,
And all the hours of eve went by.
Who knows what round the corner waits
To smite? If shipwreck, snare, or slur
Shall leave me with a head to lift,
Worthy of him that spoke with her.
A wan sky greener than the lawn,
A wan lawn paler than the sky.
She gave a flower into my hand,
And all the days of life went by.
Live ill or well, this thing is mine,
From all I guard it, ill or well.
One tawdry, tattered, faded flower
To show the jealous kings in hell.
THE LAMP POST
Laugh your best, O blazoned forests,
Me ye shall not shift or shame
With your beauty: here among you
Man hath set his spear of flame.
Lamp to lamp we send the signal,
For our lord goes forth to war;
Since a voice, ere stars were builded,
Bade him colonise a star.
Laugh ye, cruel as the morning,
Deck your heads with fruit and flower,
Though our souls be sick with pity,
Yet our hands are hard with power.
We have read your evil stories,
We have heard the tiny yell
Through the voiceless conflagration
Of your green and shining hell.
And when men, with fires and shouting,
Break your old tyrannic pales;
And where ruled a single spider
Laugh and weep a million tales.
This shall be your best of boasting:
That some poet, poor of spine.
Full and sated with our wisdom,
Full and fiery with our wine,
Shall steal out and make a treaty
With the grasses and the showers,
Rail against the grey town-mother,
Fawn upon the scornful flowers;
Rest his head among the roses,
Where a quiet song-bird sounds,
And no sword made sharp for traitors,
Hack him into meat for hounds.
THE PESSIMIST
You that have snarled through the ages, take your answer and go —
I know your hoary question, the riddle that all men know.
You have weighed the stars in a balance, and grasped the skies in a span:
Take, if you must have answer, the word of a common man.
Deep in my life lies buried one love unhealed, unshriven,
One hunger still shall haunt me — yea, in the streets of heaven;
This is the burden, babbler, this is the curse shall cling,
This is the thing I bring you; this is the pleasant thing.
‘Gainst you and all your sages, no joy of mine shall strive,
This one dead self shall shatter the men you call alive.
My grief I send to smite you, no pleasure, no belief,
Lord of the battered grievance, what do you know of grief?
I only know the praises to heaven that one man gave,
That he came on earth for an instant, to stand beside a grave,
The peace of a field of battle, where flowers are born of blood.
I only know one evil that makes the whole world good.
Beneath this single sorrow the globe of moon and sphere
Turns to a single jewel, so bright and brittle and dear
That I dread lest God should drop it, to be dashed into stars below.
You that have snarled through the ages, take your answer and go.
A FAIRY TALE
All things grew upwards, foul and fair:
The great trees fought and beat the air
With monstrous wings that would have flown;
But the old earth clung to her own,
Holding them back from heavenly wars,
Though every flower sprang at the stars.
But he broke free: while all things ceased,
Some hour increasing, he increased.
The town beneath him seemed a map,
Above the church he cocked his cap,
Above the cross his feather flew
Above the birds and still he grew.
The trees turned grass; the clouds were riven;
His feet were mountains lost in heaven;
Through strange new skies he rose alone,
The earth fell from him like a stone,
And his own limbs beneath him far
Seemed tapering down to touch a star.
He reared his head, shaggy and grim,
Staring among the cherubim;
The seven celestial floors he rent,
One crystal dome still o’er him bent:
Above his head, more clear than hope,
All heaven was a microscope.
A PORTRAIT
Fair faces crowd on Christmas night
Like seven suns a-row,
But all beyond is the wolfish wind
And the crafty feet of the snow.
But through the rout one figure goes
With quick and quiet tread;
Her robe is plain, her form is frail —
Wait if she turn her head.
I say no word of line or hue,
But if that face you see,
Your soul shall know the smile of faith’s
Awful frivolity.
Know that in this grotesque old masque
Too loud we cannot sing,
Or dance too wild, or speak too wide
To praise a hidden thing.
That though the jest be old as night,
Still shaketh sun and sphere
An everlasting laughter
Too loud for us to hear.
FEMINA CONTRA MUNDUM
The sun was black with judgment, and the moon
Blood: but between
I saw a man stand, saying, ‘To me at least
The grass is green.
‘There was no star that I forgot to fear
With love and wonder.
The birds have loved me’; but no answer came —
Only the thunder.
Once more the man stood, saying, ‘A cottage door,
Wherethrough I gazed
That instant as I turned — yea, I am vile;
Yet my eyes blazed.
‘For I had weighed the mountains in a balance,
And the skies in a scale,
I come to sell the stars — old lamps for new —
Old stars for sale.’
Then a calm voice fell all the thunder through,
A tone less rough:
‘Thou hast begun to love one of my works
Almost enough.’
TO A CERTAIN NATION
We will not let thee be, for thou art ours.
We thank thee still, though thou forget these things,
For that hour’s sake when thou didst wake all powers
With a great cry that God was sick of kings.
Leave thee there grovelling at their rusted greaves,
These hulking cowards on a painted stage,
Who, with imperial pomp and laurel leaves,
Show their Marengo — one man in a cage.
These, for whom stands no type or title given
In all the squalid tales of gore and pelf;
Though cowed by crashing thunders from all heaven.
Cain never said, ‘My brother slew himself.’
Tear you the truth out of your drivelling spy,
The maniac whom you set to swing death’s scythe.
Nay; torture not the torturer — let him lie:
What need of racks to teach a worm to writhe?
Bear with us, O our sister, not in pride,
Nor any scorn we see thee spoiled of knaves,
But only shame to hear, where Danton died,
Thy foul dead kings all laughing in their graves.
Thou hast a right to rule thyself; to be
The thing thou wilt; to grin, to fawn, to creep:
To crown these clumsy liars; ay, and we
Who knew thee once, we have a right to weep.
THE PRAISE OF DUST
‘What of vile dust?’ the preacher said.
Methought the whole world woke,
The dead stone lived beneath my foot,
And my whole body spoke.
‘You, that play tyrant to the dust,
And stamp its wrinkled face,
This patient star that flings you not
Far into homeless space.
‘Come down out of your dusty shrine
The living dust to see,
The flowers that at your sermon’s end
Stand blazing silently.
‘Rich white and blood-red blossom; stones,
Lichens like fire encrust;
A gleam of blue, a glare of gold,
The vision of the dust.
‘Pass them all by: till, as you come
Where, at a city’s edge,
Under a tree — I know it well —
Under a lattice ledge,
‘The sunshine falls on one brown head.
You, too, O cold of clay,
Eater of stones, may haply hear
The trumpets of that day
‘When God to all his paladins
By his own splendour swore
To make a fairer face than heaven,
Of dust and nothing more.’
THE BALLAD OF THE BATTLE OF GIBEON
Five kings rule o’er the Amorite,
Mighty as fear and old as night;
Swathed with unguent and gold and jewel,
Waxed they merry and fat and cruel.
Zedek of Salem, a terror and glory,
Whose face was hid while his robes were gory;
And Hoham of Hebron, whose loathly face is
Heavy and dark o’er the ruin of races;
And Piram of Jarmuth, drunk with strange wine,
Who dreamed he had fashioned all stars that shine;
And Debir of Eglon wild, without pity,
Who raged like a plague in the midst of his city;
And Japhia of Lachish, a fire that flameth,
Who did in the daylight what no man nameth.
These five kings said one to another,
‘King unto king o’er the world is brother,
Seeing that now, for a sign and a wonder,
A red eclipse and a tongue of thunder,
A shape and a finger of desolation,
Is come against us a kingless nation.
Gibeon hath failed us: it were not good
That a man remember where Gibeon stood.’
Then Gibeon sent to our captain, crying,
‘Son of Nun, let a shaft be flying,
For unclean birds are gathering greedily;
Slack not thy hand, but come thou speedily.
Yea, we are lost save thou maintain’st us,
For the kings of the mountains are gathered against us.’
Then to our people spake the Deliverer,
‘Gibeon is high, yet a host may shiver her;
Gibeon hath sent to me crying for pity,
For the lords of the cities encompass the city
With chariot and banner and bowman and lancer,
And I swear by the living God I will answer.
Gird you, O Israel, quiver and javelin,
Shield and sword for the road we travel in;
Verily, as I have promised, pay I
Life unto Gibeon, death unto Ai.’
Sudden and still as a bolt shot right
Up on the city we went by night.
Never a bird of the air could say,
‘This was the children of Israel’s way.’
Only the hosts sprang up from sleeping,
Saw from the heights a dark stream sweeping;
Sprang up straight as a great shout stung them,
And heard the Deliverer’s war-cry among them,
Heard under cupola, turret, and steeple
The awful cry of the kingless people.
Started the weak of them, shouted the strong of them,
Crashed we a thunderbolt into the throng of them,
Blindly with heads bent, and shields forced before us,
We heard the dense roar of the strife closing o’er us.
And drunk with the crash of the song that it sung them,
We drove the great spear-blade in God’s name among them.
Redder and redder the sword-flash fell.
Our eyes and our nostrils were hotter than hell;
Till full all the crest of the spear-surge shocking us,
Hoham of Hebron cried out mocking us,
‘Nay, what need of the war-sword’s plying,
Out of the desert the dust comes flying.
A little red dust, if the wind be blowing —
Who shall reck of its coming or going?’
Back the Deliverer spake as a clarion,
‘Mock at thy slaves, thou eater of carrion!
Laughest thou at us, in thy kingly clowning,
We, that laughed upon Ramases frowning.
We that stood up proud, unpardoned,
When his face was dark and his heart was hardened?
Pharaoh we knew and his steeds, not faster
Than the word of the Lord in thine ear, O master.
Sheer through the turban his wantons wove him,
Clean to the skull the Deliverer clove him;
And the two hosts reeled at the sign appalling,
As the great king fell like a great house falling.
Loudly we shouted, and living and dying.
Bore them all backward with strength and strong crying;
And Caleb struck Zedek hard at the throat,
And Japhia of Lachish Zebulon smote.
The war-swords and axes were clashing and groaning,
The fallen were fighting and foaming and moaning;
The war-spears were breaking, the war-horns were braying,
Ere the hands of the slayers were sated with slaying.
And deep in the grasses grown gory and sodden,
The treaders of all men were trampled and trodden;
