Page:Poems (1915) G K Chesterton.djvu/161



HE sky is blue with summer and the sun,

The woods are brown as autumn with the tan,

It might as Tell be Tropics and be done,

I might as well be born a copper Khan;

I fashion me an oriental fan

Made of the wholly unreceipted bills

Brought by the ice-man, sleeping in his van

(A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills).

I read the Young Philosophers for fun

—Fresh as our sorrow for the late Queen Anne—

The Dionysians whom a pint would stun,

The Pantheists who never heard of Pan.

—But through my hair electric needles ran,

And on my book a gout of water spills,

And on the skirts of heaven the guns began

(A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills).

O fields of England, cracked and dry and dun,

O soul of England, sick of words, and wan!—

The clouds grow dark;—the down-rush has begun.

—It comes, it comes, as holy darkness can,

Black as with banners, ban and arriere-ban;

A falling laughter all the valley fills,

Deep as God's thunder and the thirst of man:

(A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills).