Project Gutenberg's The Ballad of St. Barbara, by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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Title: The Ballad of St. Barbara
And Other Verses

Author: Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Release Date: April 28, 2010 [EBook #32167]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Ballad of St. Barbara
AND OTHER VERSES

BY
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON

LONDON
CECIL PALMER
OAKLEY HOUSE BLOOMSBURY STREET W.C.1.

FIRST
EDITION
1922
COPYRIGHT

TO F. C. IN MEMORIAM PALESTINE, '19

Do you remember one immortal
Lost moment out of time and space,
What time we thought, who passed the portal
Of that divine disastrous place
Where Life was slain and Truth was slandered
On that one holier hill than Rome,
How far abroad our bodies wandered
That evening when our souls came home?

The mystic city many-gated,
With monstrous columns, was your own:
Herodian stones fell down and waited
Two thousand years to be your throne.
In the grey rocks the burning blossom
Glowed terrible as the sacred blood:
It was no stranger to your bosom
Than bluebells of an English wood.

Do you remember a road that follows
The way of unforgotten feet,
Where from the waste of rocks and hollows
Climb up the crawling crooked street
The stages of one towering drama
Always ahead and out of sight ...
Do you remember Aceldama
And the jackal barking in the night?

Life is not void or stuff for scorners:
We have laughed loud and kept our love,
We have heard singers in tavern corne