g.k. chesterton's dedication, in the man who was thursday, to edmund clerihew bentley:

A cloud was on the mind of men
And wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul
When we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity
And art admired decay;
The world was old and ended:
But you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order
Crippled vices came -
Lust that had lost its laughter,
Fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler,
That lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather
As proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded,
And death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed
When you and I were young.
They twisted even decent sin
To shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour;
But we were not ashamed.
Weak if we were and foolish,
Not thus we failed, not thus;
When that black Baal blocked the heavens
he had no hymns from us.
Children we were - our forts of sand
Were even as weak as we,
High as they went we piled them up
To break that bitter sea.
Fools as we were in motley
All jangling and absurd,
When all church bells were silent
Our cap and bells were heard.

Not all unhelped we held the fort,
Our tiny flags unfurled;
Some giants laboured in that cloud
To lift it from the world.
I find again the book we found,
I feel the hour that flings
Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok
Some cry of cleaner things;
And the Green Carnation withered,
As in forest fires that pass,
Roared in the wind of all the world
Ten million leaves of grass;
Or sane and sweet and sudden as
A bird sings in the rain -
Truth out of Tusitala spoke
And pleasure out of pain.
Yes, cool and clear and sudden as
A bird sings in the grey,
Dunedin to Samoa spoke,
And darkness unto day.
But we were young, we lived to see
God break their bitter charms,
God and the good Republic
Come riding back in arms:
We have seen the city of Mansoul,
Even as it rocked, relieved -
Blessed are they who did not see,
But, being blind, believed.

This is a tale of those old fears,
Even of those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand
The true thing that it tells -
Of what colossal gods of shame
Could cow men and yet crash
Of what huge devils hid the stars
Yet fell at a pistol flash
The doubts that were so plain to chase,
So dreadful to withstand -
Oh, who shall understand but you;
Yes, who shall understand?
The doubts that drove us through the night
As we two talked amain
And day had broken on the streets
Ere it broke on the brain.
Between us, by the peace of God,
Such truth can now be told:
Yes, there is strength in striking root,
And good in growing old.
We have found common things at last,
And marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now,
And you may safely read.