The Pagans (verse)
Chesterton, G. K.
The Pagans If these dried hearts indeed forget That holy dew on dusty floor, The Four Saints strong about the bed, The God that dies above the door; Such mysteries as might dwell with men, The...
...Grope through a sunless dawn and see, Heaved high against the bursting blue In piles the heavens might hardly hold, The huge half-truth, the heathens knew...
...That only dream that ever dared To carve upon the face of fate, The colossal face that fills the sky, A grief that was compassionateIf these dear riddles seem but dumb That once were rather loved than known, The awful cry of God to God Mad echoes round a man alone...
...G. K. Chesterton...
...When in blunt blinded scripts of eld Your nursery riddle speaks again...
...Carved as one awful threefold flower Triple and cloven and yet alone, The priest, the victim and the god Wear the same smiling face of stone...
...Let them go forth, go far, and fling Deserts between them1 and desire, Drop down the past and find the first Cold chaos ere that seed of fire...
...From the high terraces of the dead Look on the dead discoloring dawn, The flat-faced rocks, the livid land, Where the scrawled likeness first was drawn...
...Where choked by hairy cactus-fingers Or sea-blue weeds like crakens curled, One sculptured scene of sacrifice Betrays the password of the world...
...Go where the graven gods of fear Flat-eyed like fishes glare and gape, Or dim against the revolving void The shapeless took a shameful shape...
...Only the comfort shall be taken Only the mysteries shall remain...
...The Cross a trinket and a trick, That blinding triangle of truth Turning through aeons unbegun Reverberant loves of age and youth...
...and the night Not of the abyss, but the embrace...
...Such mysteries as might dwell with men, The secret like a stooping face Dim but not distant...
...The Pagans If these dried hearts indeed forget That holy dew on dusty floor, The Four Saints strong about the bed, The God that dies above the door...
Vol. 11 • November 1929 • No. 2
