Explore "The Wild Knight and other Poems: to them that Mourn. (W. E. G., May 1898)" by G.K. Chesterton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Lift up your heads: in life, in death, / God knoweth his head was high. / Quit we the coward's broken breath / Who watched a strong man die.
If we must say, 'No more his peer / Cometh; the flag is furled. ' / Stand not too near him, lest he hear / That slander on the world.
The good green earth he loved and trod / Is still, with many a scar, / Writ in the chronicles of God, / A giant-bearing star.
He fell: but Britain's banner swings / Above his sunken crown. / Black death shall have his toll of kings / Before that cross goes down.
Once more shall move with mighty things / His house of ancient tale, / Where kings whose hands were kissed of kings / Went in: and came out pale.
O young ones of a darker day, / In art's wan colours clad, / Whose very love and hate are grey -- / Whose very sin is sad.
Pass on: one agony long-drawn / Was merrier than your mirth, / When hand-in-hand came death and dawn, / And spring was on the earth.