The Wild Knight and Other Poems/The Triumph of Man

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I plod and peer amid mean sounds and shapes,
  I hunt for dusty gain and dreary praise,
  And slowly pass the dismal grinning days,
Monkeying each other like a line of apes.

What care? There was one hour amid all these
  When I had stripped off like a tawdry glove
  My starriest hopes and wants, for very love
Of time and desolate eternities.

Yea, for one great hour's triumph, not in me
  Nor any hope of mine did I rejoice,
  But in a meadow game of girls and boys
Some sunset in the centuries to be.