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Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

The Happy Man

G. K. Chesterton

To teach the grey earth like a child,
  To bid the heavens repent,
I only ask from Fate the gift
  Of one man well content.

Him will I find: though when in vain
  I search the feast and mart,
The fading flowers of liberty,
  The painted masks of art.

I only find him at the last,
  On one old hill where nod
Golgotha’s ghastly trinity—
  Three persons and one god.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Wild Knight and Other Poems | Grant Richards, 1900
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