Page:Poems (1915) G K Chesterton.djvu/47



HE star-crowned cliffs seem hinged upon the sky,

The clouds are floating rags across them curled,

They open to us like the gates of God

Cloven in the last great wall of all the world.

I looked, and saw the valley of my soul

Where naked crests fight to achieve the skies,

Where no grain grows nor wine, no fruitful thing,

Only big words and starry blasphemies.

But you have clothed with mercy like a moss

The barren violence of its primal wars,

Sterile although they be and void of rule,

You know my shapeless crags have loved the stars.

How shall I thank you, O courageous heart,

That of this wasteful world you had no fear;

But bade it blossom in clear faith and sent

Your fair flower-feeding rivers: even as here

The peat burns brimming from their cups of stone

Glow brown and blood-red down the vast decline

As if Christ stood on yonder clouded peak

And turned its thousand waters into wine.