For Four Guilds: I. The Glass-Stainers

    By Gilbert Keith Chesterton



    To every Man his Mystery,
    A trade and only one:
    The masons make the hives of men,
    The domes of grey or dun,
    But we have wrought in rose and gold
    The houses of the sun.

    The shipwrights build the houses high,
    Whose green foundations sway
    Alive with fish like little flames,
    When the wind goes out to slay.
    But we abide with painted sails
    The cyclone of the day.

    The weavers make the clothes of men
    And coats for everyone;
    They walk the streets like sunset clouds;
    But we have woven and spun
    In scarlet or in golden-green
    The gay coats of the sun.

    You whom the usurers and the lords
    With insolent liveries trod,
    Deep in dark church behold, above
    Their lance-lengths by a rod,
    Where we have blazed the tabard
    Of the trumpeter of God.



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