Poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Eternities

I cannot count the pebbles in the brook.
Well hath He spoken: "Swear not by thy head.
Thou knowest not the hairs," though He, we read,
Writes that wild number in His own strange book.

I cannot count the sands or search the seas,
Death cometh, and I leave so much untrod.
Grant my immortal aureole, O my God,
And I will name the leaves upon the trees,

In heaven I shall stand on gold and glass,
Still brooding earth's arithmetic to spell;
Or see the fading of the fires of hell
Ere I have thanked my God for all the grass. 

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

1781 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version