Quotes from Poems — G. K. Chesterton
1874–1936 England
← All quotes by G. K. Chesterton
28 quotes
It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.
Poems (1917)
Heaven shall forgive you Bridge at dawn,
The clothes you wear — or do not wear —
And Ladies’ Leap-frog on the lawn
And dyes and drugs, and petits verres.
Poems (1917)
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.
Poems (1917)
Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword
To see the sort of knights you dub —
Is that the last of them — O Lord
Will someone take me to a pub?
Poems (1917)
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
Poems (1917)
Prince, Prince-Elective on the modern plan,
Fulfilling such a lot of People’s Wills,
You take the Chiltern Hundreds while you can—
A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills.
Poems (1917)
To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.
To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.
Poems (1917)
The strangest whim has seized me. ... After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
Poems (1917)