Page:Poems (1915) G K Chesterton.djvu/110



KNOW you. You will hail the huge release,

Saying the sheathing of a thousand swords,

In silence and inj ustice, well accords

With Christmas bells. And you will gild with grease

The papers, the employers, the police,

And vomit up the void your windy words

To your New Christ; who bears no whip of cords

For them that traffic in the doves of peace.

The feast of friends, the candle-fruited tree,

I have not failed to honour. And I say

It would be better for such men as we,

And we be nearer Bethlehem, if we lay

Shot dead on scarlet snows for liberty,

Dead in the daylight upon Christmas Day.