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, untravelled 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),
    So is it with the heroic thing;
    This shall not end for the world's end,
    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 your 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 dream; the streets I trod
    The lit straight streets shot out and met
    The starry streets that point to God.
    This 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.
    G. K. C.