"By the Babe Unborn"

                        by G.K. Chesterton



                If trees were tall and grasses short,
                  As in some crazy tale,
                If here and there a sea were blue
                  Beyond the breaking pale,
                
                If a fixed fire hung in the air
                  To warm me one day through,
                If deep green hair grew on great hills,
                  I know what I should do.
                
                In dark I lie; dreaming that there
                  Are great eyes cold or kind,
                And twisted streets and silent doors,
                  And living men behind.
                
                Let storm clouds come: better an hour,
                  And leave to weep and fight,
                Than all the ages I have ruled
                  The empires of the night.
                
                I think that if they gave me leave
                  Within the world to stand,
                I would be good through all the day
                  I spent in fairyland.
                
                They should not hear a word from me
                  Of selfishness or scorn,
                If only I could find the door,
                  If only I were born.

 --------------------------------------------------------------

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 - 1936) was the author of numerous
excellent books of history, biography, essays, theology and
devotion, as well as novels, short stories, poetry, and plays. 
Some of his books include _Orthodoxy_ (about how he became a
Christian), _The Man Who Was Thursday_, _Manalive_, _The Ball and
the Cross_ (novels), _The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond_, _The Club of
Queer Trades_, _The Poet and the Lunatics_, _Four Faultless
Felons_, the Father Brown stories (collections of related short
stories), _The Ballad of the White Horse_, _Greybeards at Play
and Other Comic Verses_ (poetry), _All is Grist_, All I Survey_,
_As I Was Saying_, _All Things Considered (books of essays),
_Magic_ and _The Judgement of Dr. Johnson_ (plays), _Robert Louis
Stevenson_, _Chaucer_, _St. Francis of Assisi_, _St. Thomas
Aquinas_, and _William Blake_ (biographies), and his fine
_Autobiography_.

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