The Outlaw

Priest, is any song-bird stricken?
Is one leaf less on the tree?
Is this wine less red and royal
That the hangman waits for me?

He upon your cross that hangeth,
It is writ of priestly pen,
On the night they built his gibbet,
Drank red wine among his men.

Quaff, like a brave man, as he did,
Wine and death as heaven pours--
This is my fate: O ye rulers,
O ye pontiffs, what is yours?

To wait trembling, lest yon loathly
Gallows-shape whereon I die,
In strange temples yet unbuilded,
Blaze upon an altar high.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, commonly known as G.K. Chesterton, was an influential English writer, poet, and philosopher. Renowned for his distinctive writing style, lively wit, and thought-provoking essays, Chesterton made significant contributions to literature. He authored numerous books, including the widely acclaimed "Father Brown" series of detective stories. Chesterton's work continues to captivate and inspire readers with its depth, humor, and intellectual richness.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Two Women

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Simple Poetry

Cyclopean

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Simple Poetry

The English Graves

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Simple Poetry

The Ballad Of St. Barbara

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The World's Lover

My eyes are full of lonely mirth:
Reeling with want and worn with scars,
For pride of every stone on earth,
I shake my spear at all the stars.

A live bat beats my crest above,
Lean foxes nose where I have trod,
And on my naked face the love
Which is the loneliness of God.

Outlawed: since that great day gone by--
When before prince and pope and queen
I stood and spoke a blasphemy--
'Behold the summer leaves are green.'

They cursed me: what was that to me
Who in that summer darkness furled,
With but an owl and snail to see,
Had blessed and conquered all the world?

They bound me to the scourging-stake,
They laid their whips of thorn on me;
I wept to see the green rods break,
Though blood be beautiful to see.

Benea...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Alone

Blessings there are of cradle and of clan,
Blessings that fall of priests' and princes' hands;
But never blessing full of lives and lands,
Broad as the blessing of a lonely man.

Though that old king fell from his primal throne,
And ate among the cattle, yet this pride
Had found him in the deepest grass, and cried
An 'Ecce Homo' with the trumpets blown.

And no mad tyrant, with almighty ban,
Who in strong madness dreams himself divine,
But hears through fumes of flattery and of wine
The thunder of this blessing name him man.

Let all earth rot past saints' and seraphs' plea,
Yet shall a Voice cry through its last lost war,
'This is the world, this red wreck of a star,
That a man blessed beneath an alder-tree.'

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Words For Music Perhaps

Crazy Jane And The Bishop


Bring me to the blasted oak
That I, midnight upon the stroke,
i(All find safety in the tomb.)
May call down curses on his head
Because of my dear Jack that's dead.
Coxcomb was the least he said:
i(The solid man and the coxcomb.)
Nor was he Bishop when his ban
Banished Jack the Journeyman,
i(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor so much as parish priest,
Yet he, an old book in his fist,
Cried that we lived like beast and beast:
i(The solid man and the coxcomb.)
The Bishop has a skin, God knows,
Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,
i(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor can he hide in holy black
The heron's hunch upon his back,
But a birch-tree stood my Jack:
i(The solid man and the coxcomb.)
Jack had my...

William Butler Yeats

The Ballad Of God-Makers

A bird flew out at the break of day
From the nest where it had curled,
And ere the eve the bird had set
Fear on the kings of the world.

The first tree it lit upon
Was green with leaves unshed;
The second tree it lit upon
Was red with apples red;

The third tree it lit upon
Was barren and was brown,
Save for a dead man nailed thereon
On a hill above a town.

That right the kings of the earth were gay
And filled the cup and can;
Last night the kings of the earth were chill
For dread of a naked man.

'If he speak two more words,' they said,
'The slave is more than the free;
If he speak three more words,' they said,
'The stars are under the sea.'

Said the King of the East to the King of the West,
I wot his frown ...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Wild Knight

The wasting thistle whitens on my crest,
The barren grasses blow upon my spear,
A green, pale pennon: blazon of wild faith
And love of fruitless things: yea, of my love,
Among the golden loves of all the knights,
Alone: most hopeless, sweet, and blasphemous,
The love of God:
I hear the crumbling creeds
Like cliffs washed down by water, change, and pass;
I hear a noise of words, age after age,
A new cold wind that blows across the plains,
And all the shrines stand empty; and to me
All these are nothing: priests and schools may doubt
Who never have believed; but I have loved.
Ah friends, I know it passing well, the love
Wherewith I love; it shall not bring to me
Return or hire or any pleasant thing--
Ay, I have tried it: Ay, I know its roots.
Earthquak...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

A Man And His Image

All day the nations climb and crawl and pray
In one long pilgrimage to one white shrine,
Where sleeps a saint whose pardon, like his peace,
Is wide as death, as common, as divine.

His statue in an aureole fills the shrine,
The reckless nightingale, the roaming fawn,
Share the broad blessing of his lifted hands,
Under the canopy, above the lawn.

But one strange night, a night of gale and flood,
A sound came louder than the wild wind's tone;
The grave-gates shook and opened: and one stood
Blue in the moonlight, rotten to the bone.

Then on the statue, graven with holy smiles,
There came another smile--tremendous--one
Of an Egyptian god. 'Why should you rise?
'Do I not guard your secret from the sun?

The nations come; they kneel among the f...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton