Monday, February 6, 2012

Grace

You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

     G. K. Chesterton, "Grace," British Library MS Add. 73334 (c. 1894-1896), fol. 5v, as reproduced on p. 43 of vol. 10 of the Collected works (Collected poetry, Part 1), under "Juvenile and early poems," as well as elsewhere, as indicated by the British Library record.  I was introduced to this by my sister, Lois Perisho Tebo.

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