To Hilaire Belloc
by G. K. Chesterton
Feast of the Synaxis of the 70 Holy Apostles
Anno Domini 2021, January 4
For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree:
You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
A Sussex moon, untraveled still,
I saw a moon that was the town’s,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill.
Yea, Heaven is everywhere at home,
The big blue cap that always fits,
And so it is (be calm; they come
To goal at last, my wandering wits),
and though the sullen engines swing,
Be you not much afraid, my friend.
This did not end by Nelson’s urn
Where an immortal England sits—
Nor where our tall young men in turn
Drank death like wine at Austerlitz.
And when the pedants bade us mark
What cold mechanic happenings
Must come; our souls said in the dark,
“Belike; but there are likelier things.”
Likelier across these flats afar,
These sulky levels smooth and free,
The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty;
Likelier the barricades shall blare
Slaughter below and smoke above,
And death and hate and hell declare
That men have found a thing to love.
Far from your sunny uplands set
I saw the dreams; the streets I trod,
The lit straight streets shot out and met
The starry streets that point to God;
The legend of an epic hour
A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
Under the great grey water tower
That strikes the stars on Campden Hill.
*Originally published as the Dedication of Chesterton's 1904 comic novel The Napolean of Notting Hill.
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