The Convert

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

-The Ballad of St Barbara and Other Verses (1922)

A Christmas Carol

(The Chief Constable has issued a statement declaring that carol singing in the streets by
children is illegal, and morally and physically injurious. He appeals to the public to discourage
the practice.—Daily Paper.)

God rest you merry gentlemen, 

Let nothing you dismay;  

The Herald Angels cannot sing, 

The cops arrest them on the wing, 

And warn them of the docketing  

Of anything they say.

God rest you merry gentlemen,  

May nothing you dismay:  

On your reposeful cities lie 

Deep silence, broken only by 

The motor horn’s melodious cry,  

The hooter’s happy bray.

So, when the song of children ceased  

And Herod was obeyed,  

In his high hall Corinthian

With purple and with peacock fan, 

Rested that merry gentleman; 

And nothing him dismayed.

-The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses (1922)

"A livid sky on London...And I knew the end was near."

In the novel Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (which novel the authors dedicated to Chesterton), there is the following passage:

A livid sky on London, Crowley thought, And I knew the end was near. Who had written that? Chesterton, wasn't it? The only poet in the twentieth century to even come close to the Truth.

The lines mentioned were from Chesterton's poem "The Old Song", which is included below: