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Gilbert Keith Chesterton - The Hunting Of The Dragon
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When we went hunting the Dragon
    In the days when we were young,
    We tossed the bright world over our shoulder
    As bugle and baldrick slung;
    Never was world so wild and fair
    As what went by on the wind,
    Never such fields of paradise
    As the fields we left behind:
        For this is the best of a rest for men
        That men should rise and ride
        Making a flying fairyland
        Of market and country-side,
        Wings on the cottage, wings on the wood,
        Wings upon pot and pan,
        For the hunting of the Dragon
        That is the life of a man.

    For men grow weary of fairyland
    When the Dragon is a dream,
    And tire of the talking bird in the tree,
    The singing fish in the stream;
    And the wandering stars grow stale, grow stale,
    And the wonder is stiff with scorn;
    For this is the honour of fairyland
    And the following of the horn;

        Beauty on beauty called us back
        When we could rise and ride,
        And a woman looked out of every window
        As wonderful as a bride:
        And the tavern-sign as a tabard blazed,
        And the children cheered and ran,
        For the love of the hate of the Dragon
        That is the pride of a man.

    The sages called him a shadow
    And the light went out of the sun:
    And the wise men told us that all was well
    And all was weary and one:
    And then, and then, in the quiet garden,
    With never a weed to kill,
    We knew that his shining tail had shone
    In the white road over the hill:
    We knew that the clouds were flakes of flame,
    We knew that the sunset fire
    Was red with the blood of the Dragon
    Whose death is the world`s desire.

        For the horn was blown in the heart of the night
        That men should rise and ride,
        Keeping the tryst of a terrible jest
        Never for long untried;
        Drinking a dreadful blood for wine,
        Never in cup or can,
        The death of a deathless Dragon,
        That is the life of a man.
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