The Wild Knight and Other Poems. G. K. Chesterton

The Two Women

       The Wild Knight

       The Wild Knight

      G. K. Chesterton

      Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London in 1874. He studied at the Slade School of Art, and upon graduating began to work as a freelance journalist. By 1905, he had a regular and popular column with the Illustrated London News, and began to write on an array of topics. Over the course of his life, his literary output was incredibly diverse and highly prolific, ranging from philosophy and ontology to art criticism and detective fiction. However, he is probably best-remembered for his Christian apologetics, most notably in Orthodoxy (1908) and The Everlasting Man (1925). George Bernard Shaw dubbed Chesterton “a man of colossal genius,” and of his fiction Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges said “Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story.” Chesterton died in 1936, aged 62.

      NOTE

      My thanks are due to the Editors of the Outlook and the Speaker for the kind permission they have given me to reprint a considerable number of the following poems. They have been selected and arranged rather with a view to unity of spirit than to unity of time or value; many of them being juvenile.

      THE WILD KNIGHT

      Another tattered rhymster in the ring,

       With but the old plea to the sneering schools,

      That on him too, some secret night in spring

       Came the old frenzy of a hundred fools

      To make some thing: the old want dark and deep,

       The thirst of men, the hunger of the stars,

      Since first it tinged even the Eternal’s sleep,

       With monstrous dreams of trees and towns and mars.

      When all He made for the first time He saw,

       Scattering stars as misers shake their pelf.

      Then in the last strange wrath broke His own law,

       And made a graven image of Himself._

      BY THE BABE UNBORN

      If trees were tall and grasses short,

       As in some crazy tale,

      If here and there a sea were blue

       Beyond the breaking pale,

      If a fixed fire hung in the air

       To warm me one day through,

      If deep green hair grew on great hills,

       I know what I should do.

      In dark I lie: dreaming that there

       Are great eyes cold or kind,

      And twisted streets and silent doors,

       And living men behind.

      Let storm-clouds come: better an hour,

       And leave to weep and fight,

      Than all the ages I have ruled

       The empires of the night.

      I think that if they gave me leave

       Within that world to stand,

      I would be good through all the day

       I spent in fairyland.

      They should not hear a word from me

       Of selfishness or scorn,

      If only I could find the door,

       If only I were born.

      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.

      Beneath the gallows’ foot abhorred

       The crowds cry ‘Crucify!’ and ‘Kill!’

      Higher the priests sing, ‘Praise the Lord,

       The warlock dies’; and higher still

      Shall heaven and earth hear one cry sent

       Even from the hideous gibbet height,

      ‘Praise to the Lord Omnipotent,

       The vultures have a feast to-night.’

      THE SKELETON

      Chattering finch and water-fly

      Are not merrier than I;

      Here among the flowers I lie

      Laughing everlastingly.

      No: I may not tell the best;

      Surely, friends, I might have guessed

      Death was but the good King’s jest,

       It was hid so carefully.

      A CHORD OF COLOUR

      My Lady clad herself in grey,

       That caught and clung about her throat;

      Then all the long grey winter day

       On me a living splendour smote;

      And why grey palmers holy are,

       And why grey minsters great in story,

      And grey skies ring the morning star,

       And grey hairs are a crown of glory.

      My Lady clad herself in green,

       Like meadows where the wind-waves pass;

      Then round my spirit spread, I ween,

       A splendour of forgotten grass.

      Then all that dropped of stem or sod,

       Hoarded as emeralds might be,

      I bowed to every bush, and trod

       Amid the live grass fearfully.

      My Lady clad herself in blue,

       Then on me, like the seer long gone,

      The likeness of a sapphire grew,