Explore "Ballade D'Une Grande Dame" by G.K. Chesterton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Heaven shall forgive you Bridge at dawn, / The clothes you wear -- or do not wear -- / And Ladies' Leap-frog on the lawn / And dyes and drugs, and _petits verres._ / Your vicious things shall melt in air. / . But for the Virtuous Things you do, / The Righteous Work, the Public Care, / It shall not be forgiven you.
Because you could not even yawn / When your Committees would prepare / To have the teeth of paupers drawn, / Or strip the slums of Human Hair; / Because a Doctor Otto Maehr / Spoke of "a segregated few" -- / And you sat smiling in your chair -- / It shall not be forgiven you.
Though your sins cried to -- -Father Vaughan, / These desperate you could not spare / Who steal, with nothing left to pawn; / You caged a man up like a bear / For ever in a jailor's care / Because his sins were more than _two_. / . I know a house in Hoxton where / It shall not be forgiven you.
ENVOI
Princess, you trapped a guileless Mayor / To meet some people that you knew.
When the Last Trumpet rends the air / It shall not be forgiven you.