Bay Combe

by G.K. Chesterton

With leaves below and leaves above,
And groping under tree and tree,
I found the home of my true love,
Who is a wandering home for me.

Who, lost in ruined worlds aloof,
Bore the dread dove wings like a roof;
Who, past the last lost stars of space,
Carried the fire-light on her face.

Who, passing as in idle hours,
Tamed the wild weeds to garden flowers;
Stroked the strange whirlwind's whirring wings,
And made the comets homely things.

Where she went by upon her way
The dark was dearer than the day;
Where she paused in heaven or hell,
The whole world's tale had ended well.

With leaves below and leaves above,
And groping under tree and tree,
I found the home of my true love,
Who is a wandering home for me.

Where she was flung, above, beneath,
By the rude dance of life and death,
Grow she at Gotham -- die at Rome,
Between the pine trees is her home.

In some strange town, some silver morn,
She may have wandered to be born;
Stopped at some motley crowd impressed,
And called them kinsfolk for a jest.

If we again in goodness thrive,
And the dead saints become alive,
Then pedants bald and parchments brown
May claim her blood for London town.

But leaves below and leaves above,
And groping under tree and tree,
I found the home of my true love,
Who is a wandering home for me.

The great gravestone she may pass by,
And without noticing, may die;
The streets of silver Heaven may tread,
With her grey awful eyes unfed.

The city of great peace in pain
May pass, until she find again
This little house of holm and fir
God built before the stars for her.

Here in the fallen leaves is furled
Her secret centre of the world.
We sit and feel in dusk and dun
The stars swing round us like a sun.

For leaves below and leaves above,
And groping under tree and tree,
I found the home of my true love,
Who is a wandering home for me.

* * *

I liked the refrain of this poem enough to get me actually to try to understand the rest. The refrain itself has a very deep idea -- that, since home is where the heart is, Frances is his home.

The rest of the poem is an odd, paradoxical tribute to woman; one woman in particular. There is a strange mixing of huge cosmic notions and warm homey notions, put together on purpose to show that the woman brings these two sets of things together by her nature. She "makes the comets homely things."

She tames things, makes them good and beautiful. She is too big to have truly come from her home town or her family, yet she still lays claim to these things.

Even death is different for her. It doesn't do much to her. Her heaven is "a little house," again mixing the cosmic and the homely.

And she remains "a wandering home," a home that goes wherever the man goes, turning wherever he is to a home.

When we are young, the house where we grew up in is home. A little older, and "going home" means visiting one's parents. But to these souls who love, home is with the loved one. It cannot be anywhere else, and no place is strange if the loved one is there. She is a wandering home.