Poetry Revisited: Gold Leaves by G. K. Chesterton

Gold Leaves

(from The Wild Knight and Other Poems: 1900)

Lo! I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold;
Grey hairs and golden leaves cry out
The year and I are old.

In youth I sought the prince of men,
Captain in cosmic wars,
Our Titan, even the weeds would show
Defiant, to the stars.

But now a great thing in the street
Seems any human nod,
Where shift in strange democracy
The million masks of God.

In youth I sought the golden flower
Hidden in wood or wold,
But I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold.

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
English writer,poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist,
orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic