THE TOWERS OF TIME

Under what withering leprous light The very grass as hair is grey, Grass in the cracks of the paven courts Of gods we graved but yesterday. Senate, republic, empire, all We leaned our backs on like a wall And blessed as stron as strong and blamed as stolid Can it be these that waver and fall? And what is this like a ghost returning, A dream grown strong in the strong daylight? The all-forsaken, the unforgotten, The ever-behind and out of sight. We turned our backs and our blind flesh felt it Growing and growing, a tower in height.

Ah, not alone the evil splendour And not the insolent arms alone Break with the ramrod, stiff and brittle, The sceptre of the nordic throne; But things of manlier renown Reel in the wreck of throne and crown, With tyrannous tyranny, tyrannous loyalty Tyrannous liberty, all gone down.

(There is never a crack in the ivory tower Or a hinge to groan in the house of gold Or a leaf of the rose in the wind to wither And she grows young as the world grows old. A Woman clothed with the sun returning to clothe the sun when the sun is cold.)

Ah, who had guessed that in a moment Great Liberty that loosed the tribes, the Republic of the young men's battles Grew stale and stank of old men's bribes; And where we watched her smile in power A statue like a starry tower the stone face sneers as in a nightmare Down on a world that worms devour. (Archaic incredible dead dawns breaking Deep in the deserts and waste and wealds, Where the dead cry aloud on Our Lady of Victories, Queen of the Eagles, aloft on the shields, And the sun is gone up on the Thundering Legion On the roads of Rome to the Battlefields.)

Ah, who had known who had not seen How soft and sudden on the fame Of my most noble English ships The sunset light of Carthage came And the thing I never had dreamed could be In the house of my fathers came to me Through the sea-wall cloven, the cloud and dark, A voice divided, a doubtful sea. (The light is bright on the Tower of David, The evening glows with the morning star In the skies turned back and the days returning She walks so near who had wandered far And in the heart of the swords, the seven times wounded, Was never wearied as our hearts are.)

How swift as with a fall of snow New things grow hoary with the light. We watch the wrinkles crawl like snakes On the new image in our sight. The lines that sprang up taut and bold Sag like primordial monsters old, Sink in the bas-reliers of fossil And the slow earth swallows them, fold on fold, But light are the feet on the hills of the morning Of the lambs that leap up to the Bride of the Sun, And swift are the birds as the butterflies flashing And sudden as laughter the rivulets run And sudden for ever as summer lightning the light is bright on the world begun.

Thou wilt not break as we have broken The towers we reared to rival Thee. More true to England than the English More just to freedom than the free. O trumpet of the intolerant truth Thou art more full of grace and ruth For the hopes of th world than the world that made them, The world that murdered the loves of our youth. Thou art more kind to our dreams, Our Mother, Than the wise that wove us the dreams for shade. God if more good to the gods that mocked Him Than men are good to the gods they made. Tenderer with toys than a boy grown brutal, Breaking the puppets with which he played.

What are the flowers the garden guards not And how but here should dreams return? And how on hearths made cold with ruin the wide wind-scattered ashes burn What is the home of the heart set free, And where is the nesting of liberty, And where from the world shall the world take shelter And man be matter, and not with Thee? Wisdom is set in her throne of thunder, The Mirror of Justice blinds the day Where are the towers that are not of the City, Trophies and trumpetings, where are they? Where over the maze of the world returning The bye-ways bend to the King's highway.

G.K.Chesterton

Femina Contra Mundum ====================

G K Chesterton

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.'

Variations of an Air

Old King Cole Was a merry old soul And a merry old soul was he He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl and he called for his fiddlers three

after Lord Tennyson

Cole, that unwearied prince of Colchester, Growing more gay with age and with long days Deeper in laughter and desire of life As that Virginian climber on our walls Flames scarlet with the fading of the year; Called for his wassail and that other weed Virginian also, from the western woods Where English Raleigh checked the boast of Spain, And lighting joy with joy, and piling up Pleasure as crown for pleasure, bade me bring Those three, the minstrels whose emblazoned coats Shone with the oyster-shells of Colchester; And these three played, and playing grew more fain Of mirth and music; till the heathen came And the King slept beside the northern sea.

after W.B. Yeats

Of an old King in a story From the grey sea-folk I have heard Whose heart was no more broken Than the wings of a bird.

As soon as the moon was silver And the thin stars began, He took his pipe and his tankard, Like an old peasant man.

And three tall shadows were with him And came at his command; And played before him for ever The fiddles of fairyland.

And he died in the young summer Of the world's desire; Before our hearts were broken Like sticks in a fire.

after Walt Whitman

Me clairvoyant, Me conscious of you, old camarado, Needing no telescope, lorgnette, field-glass, opera-glass, myopic pince-nez, Me piercing two thousand years with eye naked and not ashamed; The crown cannot hide you from me, Musty old feudal-heraldic trappings cannot hide you from me, I perceive that you drink. (I am drinking with you. I am as drunk as you are.) I see you are inhaling tobacco, puffing, smoking, spitting (I do not object to your spitting), You prophetic of American largeness, You anticipating the broad masculine manners of these States; I see in you also there are movements, tremors, tears, desire for the melodious, I salute your three violinists, endlessly making vibrations, Rigid, relentless, capable of going on for ever; They play my accompaniment; but I shall take no notice of any accompaniment; I myself am a complete orchestra. So long.

The Strange Music

Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack, But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon my back, Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret, Still, my hope is all before me; for I cannot play it yet.

In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath e'er let fall, In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all; Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame, Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name.

Not as mine, my soul's annointed, not as mine the rude and light Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight; Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar, Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.

But on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once, Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce. But I will not fear to match them - no by God, I will not fear, I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.

G.K.Chesterton

Second Spring

The House of Christmas

By G.K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth Out of an inn to roam; In the place where she was homeless All men are at home. The crazy stable close at hand, With shaking timber and shifting sand, Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes, And strangers under the sun, And they lay their heads in a foreign land Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chance and honour and high surprise, But our homes are under miraculous skies Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable, Where the beasts feed and foam; Only where He was homeless Are you and I at home; We have hands that fashion and heads that know, But our hearts we lost-how long ago! In a place no chart nor ship can show Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wife's tale, And strange the plain things are, The earth is enough and the air is enough For our wonder and our war; But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings And our peace is put in impossible things Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening Home shall all men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless And all men are at home.

A Ballade of Suicide

The gallows in my garden, people say, Is new and neat and adequately tall; I tie the noose on in a knowing way As one that knots his necktie for a ball; But just as all the neighbourson the wall Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!" The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all I think I will not hang myself to-day.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall I see a little cloud all pink and grey Perhaps the rector's mother will NOT call I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall That mushrooms could be cooked another way I never read the works of Juvenal I think I will not hang myself to-day.

The world will have another washing-day; The decadents decay; the pedants pall; And H.G. Wells has found that children play, And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall; Rationalists are growing rational And through thick woods one finds a stream astray, So secret that the very sky seems small I think I will not hang myself to-day.

ENVOI Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way; Even to-day your royal head may fall I think I will not hang myself to-day.

G.K. Chesterton

TO HILAIRE BELLOC

by G.K. Chesterton

For every tiny town or place God made the stars especially; Babies look up with owlish face And see them tangled in a tree; You saw a moon from Sussex Downs, A Sussex moon, untravelled still, I saw a moon that was the town's, The largest lamp on Campden Hill.

Yea; Heaven is everywhere at home The big blue cap that always fits, And so it is (be calm; they come To goal at last, my wandering wits), So is it with the heroic thing; This shall not end for the world's end And though the sullen engines swing, Be you not much afraid, my friend.

This did not end by Nelson's urn Where an immortal England sits Nor where your tall young men in turn Drank death like wine at Austerlitz. And when the pedants bade us mark What cold mechanic happenings Must come; our souls said in the dark, "Belike; but there are likelier things."

Likelier across these flats afar These sulky levels smooth and free The drums shall crash a waltz of war And Death shall dance with Liberty; Likelier the barricades shall blare Slaughter below and smoke above, And death and hate and hell declare That men have found a thing to love.

Far from your sunny uplands set I saw the dream; the streets I trod The lit straight streets shot out and met The starry streets that point to God. This legend of an epic hour A child I dreamed, and dream it still, Under the great grey water-tower That strikes the stars on Campden Hill

G.K.C.

(Preface to Chesterton's "The Napoleon of Notting Hill").

The Unpardonable Sin ====================

G K Chesterton

I do not cry, beloved, neither curse. Silence and strength, these two at least are good. He gave me sun and stars and aught He could, But not a woman's love; for that is hers.

He sealed her heart from sage and questioner Yea, with seven seals, as he has sealed the grave. And if she give it to a drunken slave, The Day of Judgment shall not challenge her.

Only this much: if one, deserving well, Touching your thin young hands and making suit, Feel not himself a crawling thing, a brute, Buried and bricked in a forgotten hell;

Prophet and poet be he over sod, Prince among angels in the highest place, God help me, I will smite him on the face, Before the glory of the face of God. 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.

G.K. CHESTERTON