For Four Guilds: I. The Glass-Stainers

written by


« Reload image

To every Man his Mystery,
  A trade and only one:
  The masons make the hives of men,
  The domes of grey or dun,
  But we have wrought in rose and gold
  The houses of the sun.

  The shipwrights build the houses high,
  Whose green foundations sway
  Alive with fish like little flames,
  When the wind goes out to slay.
  But we abide with painted sails
  The cyclone of the day.

  The weavers make the clothes of men
  And coats for everyone;
  They walk the streets like sunset clouds;
  But we have woven and spun
  In scarlet or in golden-green
  The gay coats of the sun.

  You whom the usurers and the lords
  With insolent liveries trod,
  Deep in dark church behold, above
  Their lance-lengths by a rod,
  Where we have blazed the tabard
  Of the trumpeter of God.

© Gilbert Keith Chesterton