Skip to content
Linespedia

Alone

Topics: classic

Blessings there are of cradle and of clan,     Blessings that fall of priests' and princes' hands;     But never blessing full of lives and lands,     Broad as the blessing of a lonely man.     Though that old king fell from his primal throne,     And ate among the cattle, yet this pride     Had found him in the deepest grass, and cried     An 'Ecce Homo' with the trumpets blown.     And no mad tyrant, with almighty ban,     Who in strong madness dreams himself divine,     But hears through fumes of flattery and of wine     The thunder of this blessing name him man.     Let all earth rot past saints' and seraphs' plea,     Yet shall a Voice cry through its last lost war,     'This is the world, this red wreck of a star,     That a man blessed beneath an alder-tree.'

AI analysis available. Enable JavaScript to interact.

About this line

"Blessings there are of cradle and of clan,..."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton's contribution to classic is further solidified by the brilliance found in "Alone"... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

Classified Tags

Related lines

"The gallows in my garden, people say,     Is new and neat and adequately tall.     I tie the noose on in a knowing way     As one that knots"

"Laugh your best, O blazoned forests,     Me ye shall not shift or shame     With your beauty: here among you     Man hath set his spear of flam"

"When you came over the top of the world     In the great day on the Downs,     The air was crisp and the clouds were curled,     When you came"

"The wasting thistle whitens on my crest,     The barren grasses blow upon my spear,     A green, pale pennon: blazon of wild faith     And love"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Continue Reading

"The gallows in my garden, people say,     Is new a..."

Weekly Poetic Insight

Join our literary Sanctuary

Get the most inspiring lines, poetic analysis, and secret shayaris delivered to your inbox every Sunday.