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Gilbert Keith Chesterton - For Four Guilds: II. The Bridge-Builders
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In the world`s whitest morning
    As hoary with hope,
    The Builder of Bridges
    Was priest and was pope:
    And the mitre of mystery
    And the canopy his,
    Who darkened the chasms
    And domed the abyss.

    To eastward and westward
    Spread wings at his word
    The arch with the key-stone
    That stoops like a bird;
    That rides the wild air
    And the daylight cast under;
    The highway of danger,
    The gateway of wonder.

    Of his throne were the thunders
    That rivet and fix
    Wild weddings of strangers
    That meet and not mix;
    The town and the cornland;
    The bride and the groom:
    In the breaking of bridges
    Is treason and doom.

    But he bade us, who fashion
    The road that can fly,
    That we build not too heavy
    And build not too high:
    Seeing alway that under
    The dark arch`s bend
    Shine death and white daylight
    Unchanged to the end.

    Who walk on his mercy
    Walk light, as he saith,
    Seeing that our life
    Is a bridge above death;
    And the world and its gardens
    And hills, as ye heard,
    Are born above space
    On the wings of a bird.

    Not high and not heavy
    Is building of his:
    When ye seal up the flood
    And forget the abyss,
    When your towers are uplifted,
    Your banners unfurled,
    In the breaking of bridges
    Is the end of the world.
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