GKC

his poetry

One chapter of my first book is on G.K. Chesterton, one of my favorite writers; it is mostly on his fiction, essays and ideas but he was also a poet.

In an earlier post I described how I got to know Frank Meyer and his sons and ended up spending spring vacation of my sophomore year with the Meyers. That is where I first encountered Lepanto, still one of my favorite poems and, I think, my first introduction to Chesterton. That was more than sixty years ago but I still remember hearing it for the first time, read by Frank.

Like much of Chesterton’s work, the poem is both a story and an argument, a defense of his religious, historical and philosophical views. The story is the battle of Lepanto, the 16^th century naval victory of a combined Christian fleet over the Ottomans. The argument contrasts Medieval Europe, represented by the Christian commander Don John of Austria, the bastard son of Charles V of Spain,

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,

With

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;

…

The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,

And with Islam:

We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”

And ends:

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
…

Chesterton does the same thing at greater length — 95 pages — in The Ballad of the White Horse. The story this time is Alfred against the Danes, the contrast Christianity against paganism. It is dedicated to his wife:

…

Lady, by one light only
  We look from Alfred’s eyes,
We know he saw athwart the wreck
The sign that hangs about your neck,
Where One more than Melchizedek
 Is dead and never dies.

Therefore I bring these rhymes to you,
 Who brought the cross to me,
Since on you flaming without flaw
I saw the sign that Guthrum saw
When he let break his ships of awe,
 And laid peace on the sea.
…

There is a great deal good in the poem, but the central scene is Alfred harping in the Danish camp, seen as a debate between paganism, represented by Guthrum and his three earls:

With three great earls King Guthrum
Went the rounds from fire to fire,
With Harold, nephew of the King,
And Ogier of the Stone and Sling,
And Elf, whose gold lute had a string
 That sighed like all desire.

Each earl gives his picture of paganism, starting with the youngest:

“For Rome was given to rule the world,
And gat of it little joy —
But we, but we shall enjoy the world,
 The whole huge world a toy.

And ending with Guthrum, who is an atheist:

When he shall read what is written
So plain in clouds and clods,
When he shall hunger without hope
 Even for evil gods.

And Alfred responds:

“What have the strong gods given?
Where have the glad gods led?
When Guthrum sits on a hero's throne
 And asks if he is dead?

"Sirs, I am but a nameless man,
 A rhymester without home,
Yet since I come to the Wessex clay
 And carry the cross of Rome,

"I will even answer the mighty earl
 That asked of Wessex men
Why they be meek and monkish folk,
And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke;
What sign have we save blood and smoke?
 Here is my answer then.

"That on you is fallen the shadow,
 And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly
And you hang over us like the sky
You are more tired of victory,
 Than we are tired of shame.

"That though you hunt the Christian man
 Like a hare in the hill-side
The hare has still more heart to run
 Than you have heart to ride.

That — I have cut most of it — is the core of the argument, arguably of the poem, but there is a great deal more. Read it, all 95 pages.

I think these two are Chesterton’s best poems. Others I am fond of include:

A Ballade of Suicide: and why not to

The Last Hero:

…
The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day,
They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way,
I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers,
As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers.
How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,
Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky. 
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose,—
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes. 

Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans,
What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones?
My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease,
Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas.
To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given,
The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven.
The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see.
To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me:
One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath:
You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death. 

And, on a less serious and more political note, the ultimate horror story of paternalist regulation, The Horrible History of Jones, starting with

Jones had a dog; it had a chain;
Not often worn, not causing pain; 
But, as the I.K.L. had passed 
Their 'Unleashed Cousins Act’ at last, 

And ending with

The head fell off when it was hit:
Then words did rise and honest doubt, 
And four Commissioners sat about 
Whether the slash that left him dead 
Cut off his body or his head. 

An author in the Isle of Wight 
Observed with unconcealed delight 
A land of just and old renown 
Where Freedom slowly broadened down 
From Precedent to Precedent. 
And this, I think, was what he meant.

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