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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ERRANTRY by JOHN GALSWORTHY

First Line: COME! LET US LAY A LANCE IN REST
Last Line: TO LOSE ALL THOUGHT OF RECOMPENSE!
COME! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little ends,
And never raise a rebel cry!

Ah! for a weapon so sublime,
That, lifted, counts no cost of woe or weal,
Since Fate demands it shivered every time!
When in the wildness of our charge we reel
Men laugh indeed -- the sweeter heavens smile,
For all the world of fat prosperity
Can not outweigh that broken steel!

The echo of our challenging
Sets swinging all the bells of ribaldry,
And yet those other hidden bells that ring
The faint and wondering chimes of sympathy
Within the true cathedral of our souls --
So, crystal-clear, the shepherd's pipe will move
His browsing flock to reverie.

God save the pennon, in the morn,
That signals moon to stand, and sun to fly;
That flutters when the weak is overborne
To stem the tide of fate and certainty.
It knows not reason, and it seeks no fame,
But has engraven round its stubborn wood:
"Knight-errant, to Eternity!"

So! Undismayed beneath the clouds
Shall float the banner of forlorn defence --
A jest to the complacency of crowds,
But haloed with the one diviner sense:
To hold itself as nothing to itself;
And in the quest of the imagined star
To lose all thought of recompense!



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