To Hilaire Belloc

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.