The Triumph of Man

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

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 theseWhen I had stripped off like a tawdry gloveMy starriest hopes and wants, for very loveOf time and desolate eternities.

Yea, for one great hour's triumph, not in meNor any hope of mine did I rejoice,But in a meadow game of girls and boysSome sunset in the centuries to be.