To Captain Fryatt

Trampled yet red is the last of the embers,
Red the last cloud of a sun that has set;
What of your sleeping though Flanders remembers,
What of your waking, if England forget?

Why should you share in the hearts that we harden,
In the shame of our nature, who see it and live?
How more than the godly the greedy can pardon,
How well and how quickly the hungry forgive.

Ah, well if the soil of the stranger had wrapped you,
While the lords that you served and the friends that you knew
Hawk in the marts of the tyrants that trapped you,
Tout in the shops of the butchers that slew.

Why should you wake for a realm that is rotten,
Stuffed with their bribes and as dead to their debts?
Sleep and forget us, as we have forgotten;
For Flanders remembers and England forgets.

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 Skeleton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Simple Poetry

A Second Childhood

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Simple Poetry

An Alliance

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Simple Poetry

A Man And His Image

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Simple Poetry

English

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The English Graves

Were I that wandering citizen whose city is the world,
I would not weep for all that fell before the flags were furled;
I would not let one murmur mar the trumpets volleying forth
How God grew weary of the kings, and the cold hell in the north.
But we whose hearts are homing birds have heavier thoughts of home,
Though the great eagles burn with gold on Paris or on Rome,
Who stand beside our dead and stare, like seers at an eclipse,
At the riddle of the island tale and the twilight of the ships.

For these were simple men that loved with hands and feet and eyes,
Whose souls were humbled to the hills and narrowed to the skies,
The hundred little lands within one little land that lie,
Where Severn seeks the sunset isles or Sussex scales the sky.

And what is theirs, though...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Mediævalism

If men should rise and return to the noise and time of the tourney,
The name and fame of the tabard, the tangle of gules and gold,
Would these things stand and suffice for the bourne of a backward journey,
A light on our days returning, as it was in the days of old?

Nay, there is none rides back to pick up a glove or a feather,
Though the gauntlet rang with honour or the plume was more than a crown:
And hushed is the holy trumpet that called the nations together
And under the Horns of Hattin the hope of the world went down.

Ah, not in remembrance stored, but out of oblivion starting,
Because you have sought new homes and all that you sought is so,
Because you had trodden the fire and barred the door in departing,
Returns in your chosen exile the glory of long ago.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

To Them That Mourn

Lift up your heads: in life, in death,
God knoweth his head was high.
Quit we the coward's broken breath
Who watched a strong man die.

If we must say, 'No more his peer
Cometh; the flag is furled.'
Stand not too near him, lest he hear
That slander on the world.

The good green earth he loved and trod
Is still, with many a scar,
Writ in the chronicles of God,
A giant-bearing star.

He fell: but Britain's banner swings
Above his sunken crown.
Black death shall have his toll of kings
Before that cross goes down.

Once more shall move with mighty things
His house of ancient tale,
Where kings whose hands were kissed of kings
Went in: and came out pale.

O young ones of a darker day,
In art's wan colours clad,
...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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 ...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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?

Bea...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

On The Downs

When you came over the top of the world
In the great day on the Downs,
The air was crisp and the clouds were curled,
When you came over the top of the world,
And under your feet were spire and street
And seven English towns.

And I could not think that the pride was perished
As you came over the down;
Liberty, chivalry, all we cherished,
Lost in a rattle of pelf and perished;
Or the land we love that you walked above
Withering town by town.

For you came out on the dome of the earth
Like a vision of victory,
Out on the great green dome of the earth
As the great blue dome of the sky for girth,
And under your feet the shires could meet
And your eyes went out to sea.

Under your feet the towns were seven,
Alive and alone on high,

Gilbert Keith Chesterton