Page:Poems (1915) G K Chesterton.djvu/153



EAVEN shall forgive you Bridge at dawn,

The clothes you wear—or do not wear—

And Ladies' Leap-frog on the lawn

And dyes and drugs, and petits verres.

Your vicious things shall melt in air

But for the Virtuous Things you do,

The Righteous Work, the Public Care,

It shall not be forgiven you.

Because you could not even yawn

When your Committees would prepare

To have the teeth of paupers drawn,

Or strip the slums of Human Hair;

Because a Doctor Otto Maehr

Spoke of "a segregated few"—

And you sat smiling in your chair—

It shall not be forgiven you.

Though your sins cried to—Father Vaughan,

These desperate you could not spare

Who steal, with nothing left to pawn;

You caged a man up like a bear

For ever in a jailor's care

Because his sins were more than two

I know a house in Hoxton where

I t shall not be forgiven you.