Poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Mortal Answers

          . . . . . . COME AWAY—
          WITH THE FAIRIES, HAND IN HAND,
          FOR THE WORLD IS MORE FULL OF WEEPING
          THAN YOU CAN UNDERSTAND.

                                  W. B. Yeats.

FROM the Wood of the Old Wives' Fables
   They glittered out of the grey,
And with all the Armies of Elf-land
   I strove like a beast at bay;

With only a right arm wearied,
   Only a red sword worn,
And the pride of the House of Adam
   That holdeth the stars in scorn.

For they came with chains of flowers
   And lilies lances free,
There in the quiet greenwood
   To take my grief from me.

And I said, "Now all is shaken
   When heavily hangs the brow,
When the hope of the years is taken
   The last star sunken. Now—

"Hear, you chattering cricket,
   Hear, you spawn of the sod,
The strange strong cry in the darkness
   Of one man praising God,

"That out of the night and nothing
   With travail of birth he came
To stand one hour in the sunlight
   Only to say her name.

"Falls through her hair the sunshine
   In showers; it touches, see,
Her high bright cheeks in turning;
   Ah, Elfin Company,

"The world is hot and cruel,
   We are weary of heart and hand,
But the world is more full of glory:
   Than you can understand."

1. The New Fiction
2. The Deluge
3. The Strange Music
4. On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in all Classes
5. Whenever William Cobbett

Print

1856 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version