The Wild Knight and Other Poems/The Earth’s Shame

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Name not his deed: in shuddering and in haste
  We dragged him darkly o'er the windy fell:
That night there was a gibbet in the waste,
    And a new sin in hell.

Be his deed hid from commonwealths and kings,
  By all men born be one true tale forgot;
But three things, braver than all earthly things,
    Faced him and feared him not.

Above his head and sunken secret face
  Nested the sparrow's young and dropped not dead.
From the red blood and slime of that lost place
    Grew daisies white, not red.

And from high heaven looking upon him,
  Slowly upon the face of God did come
A smile the cherubim and seraphim
    Hid all their faces from.