TO HILAIRE BELLOC

     
           THE DEDICATION OF THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL
     
           For every tiny town or place
       God made the stars especially;
     Babies look up with owlish face
       And see them tangled in a tree:
     You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
       A Sussex moon, untravelled still,
     I saw a moon that was the town's,
       The largest lamp on Campden Hill.
           Yea, Heaven is everywhere at home.
       The big blue cap that always fits,
     And so it is (be calm; they come
       To goal at last, my wandering wits),
     So it is with the heroic thing;
       This shall not end for the world's end,
     And though the sullen engines swing,
       Be you not much afraid, my friend.
           This did not end by Nelson's urn
       Where an immortal England sits—
     Nor where your tall young men in turn
       Drank death like wine at Austerlitz.
     And when the pedants bade us mark
       What cold mechanic happenings
     Must come; our souls said in the dark,
       “Belike; but there are likelier things.”
           Likelier across these flats afar,
       These sulky levels smooth and free,
     The drums shall crash a waltz of war
       And Death shall dance with Liberty;
     Likelier the barricades shall blare
       Slaughter below and smoke above,
     And death and hate and hell declare
       That men have found a thing to love.
           Far from your sunny uplands set
       I saw the dream; the streets I trod,
     The lit straight streets shot out and met
       The starry streets that point to God;
     The legend of an epic hour
       A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
     Under the great grey water-tower
       That strikes the stars on Campden Hill