Explore "The Wild Knight and other Poems: the Wood-Cutter" by G.K. Chesterton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We came behind him by the wall, / My brethren drew their brands, / And they had strength to strike him down -- / And I to bind his hands.
Only once, to a lantern gleam, / He turned his face from the wall, / And it was as the accusing angel's face / On the day when the stars shall fall.
I grasped the axe with shaking hands, / I stared at the grass I trod; / For I feared to see the whole bare heavens / Filled with the face of God.
I struck: the serpentine slow blood / In four arms soaked the moss -- / Before me, by the living Christ, / The blood ran in a cross.
Therefore I toil in forests here / And pile the wood in stacks, / And take no fee from the shivering folk / Till I have cleansed the axe.
But for a curse God cleared my sight, / And where each tree doth grow / I see a life with awful eyes, / And I must lay it low.