Explore "The Wild Knight and other Poems: the Wild Knight" by G.K. Chesterton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The wasting thistle whitens on my crest, / The barren grasses blow upon my spear, / A green, pale pennon: blazon of wild faith / And love of fruitless things: yea, of my love, / Among the golden loves of all the knights, / Alone: most hopeless, sweet, and blasphemous, / The love of God: / I hear the crumbling creeds / Like cliffs washed down by water, change, and pass; / I hear a noise of words, age after age, / A new cold wind that blows across the plains, / And all the shrines stand empty; and to me / All these are nothing: priests and schools may doubt / Who never have believed; but I have loved. / Ah friends, I know it passing well, the love / Wherewith I love; it shall not bring to me / Return or hire or any pleasant thing -- / Ay, I have tried it: Ay, I know its roots. / Earthquake and plague have burst on it in vain / And rolled back shattered -- / Babbling neophytes! / Blind, startled fools -- think you I know it not? / Think you to teach me? Know I not His ways? / Strange-visaged blunders, mystic cruelties. / All! all! I know Him, for I love Him. Go!
So, with the wan waste grasses on my spear, / I ride for ever, seeking after God. / My hair grows whiter than my thistle plume, / And all my limbs are loose; but in my eyes / The star of an unconquerable praise: / For in my soul one hope for ever sings, / That at the next white corner of a road / My eyes may look on Him. / Hush -- I shall know / The place when it is found: a twisted path / Under a twisted pear-tree -- this I saw / In the first dream I had ere I was born, / Wherein He spoke. / But the grey clouds come down / In hail upon the icy plains: I ride, / Burning for ever in consuming fire.