Page:Poems (1915) G K Chesterton.djvu/133



O you have gained the golden crowns, so you have piled together

The laurels and the jewels, the pearls out of the blue,

But l will beat the bounding drum and I will fly the feather

For all the glory I have lost, the good I never knew.

I saw the light of morning pale on princely human faces,

In tales irrevocably gone, in final night enfurled,

I saw the tail of flying fights, a glimpse of burning blisses,

And laughed to think what I had lost—the wealth of all the world.

Yea, ruined in a royal game I was before my cradle;

Was ever gambler hurling gold who lost such things as I?

The purple moth that died an hour ere I was born of woman,

That great green sunset God shall make three days after I die.