Read "The Wild Knight and other Poems: the Earth's Shame" by G.K. Chesterton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Name not his deed: in shuddering and in haste / We dragged him darkly o'er the windy fell: / That night there was a gibbet in the waste, / And a new sin in hell.
Be his deed hid from commonwealths and kings, / By all men born be one true tale forgot; / But three things, braver than all earthly things, / Faced him and feared him not.
Above his head and sunken secret face / Nested the sparrow's young and dropped not dead. / From the red blood and slime of that lost place / Grew daisies white, not red.
And from high heaven looking upon him, / Slowly upon the face of God did come / A smile the cherubim and seraphim / Hid all their faces from.