Poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Cyclopean

A mountainous and mystic brute
No rein can curb, no arrow shoot,
Upon whose doomed deformed back
I sweep the planets' scorching track.

Old is the elf, and wise, men say,
His hair grows green as ours grows grey;
He mocks the stars with myriad hands,
High as that swinging forest stands.

But though in pigmy wanderings dull
I scour the deserts of his skull,
I never find the face, eyes, teeth,
Lowering or laughing underneath.

I met my foe in an empty dell,
His face in the sun was naked hell.
I thought, ‘One silent, bloody blow,
No priest would curse, no crowd would know.'

Then cowered: a daisy, half concealed,
Watched for the fame of that poor field;
And in that flower and suddenly
Earth opened its one eye on me. 

1. The Englishman
2. Confessional
3. Eternities
4. A Cider Song
5. The New Freethinker

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