praise of dust
by Chesterton · Cluster: Mortality · Grave · Memento Mori
Abstract
A lyric in which despised ‘vile dust’ speaks back, proclaiming the living glory of the created world and the promise that God will make of dust ‘a fairer face than heaven’; on humility, mortality and wonder.
Testo / Text
Connections
Archetypes: Tyrant, Prophet, Dust Personified
Topoi: Memento Mori, World Upside Down, Vanitas Motifs: Dust, Flowers, White and Red, Stone and Marble, Sun, Fire Themes & Concepts: Humility, Mortality, Wonder and Gratitude, Grace and Redemption, Resurrection, Paradox, Metamorphosis Transformation, Providence, Apocalypse Forms & Genres: Lyric, Dramatic Monologue Historical References: Bible, Christianity
Testo integrale / Full text
The Praise Of Dust
G. K. Chesterton
“What of vile dust?” the preacher said.
Methought the whole world woke,
The dead stone lived beneath my foot,
And my whole body spoke.
“You, that play tyrant to the dust,
And stamp its wrinkled face,
This patient star that flings you not
Far into homeless space.
“Come down out of your dusty shrine
The living dust to see,
The flowers that at your sermon’s end
Stand blazing silently.
“Rich white and blood-red blossom; stones,
Lichens like fire encrust;
A gleam of blue, a glare of gold,
The vision of the dust.
“Pass them all by: till, as you come
Where, at a city’s edge,
Under a tree—I know it well—
Under a lattice ledge,
“The sunshine falls on one brown head.
You, too, O cold of clay,
Eater of stones, may haply hear
The trumpets of that day
“When God to all his paladins
By his own splendour swore
To make a fairer face than heaven,
Of dust and nothing more.”