An obscure Chesterton gem

I just encountered this little poem for the first time today.

Ballad of the Sun

O well for him that loves the sun
That sees the heaven-race ridden or run,
The splashing seas of sunset won,
And shouts for victory.

God made the sun to crown his head,
And when death’s dart at last is sped,
At least it will not find him dead,
And pass the carrion by.

O ill for him that loves the sun;
Shall the sun stoop for anyone?
Shall the sun weep for hearts undone
Or heavy souls that pray?

Not less for us and everyone
Was that white web of splendor spun;
O well for him who loves the sun
Although the sun should slay.

-G. K. Chesterton

Short and sweet and very meaningful, as Chesterton’s poems always are.  (Well they’re not always short, but they’re always good.)  Chesteron was a lover of nature.  At the same time, he was careful to divide that from worship of nature.  Nature has great beauty and provides many good things for us.  This is because God created nature in order to allow us life and enjoyment, and God has mercy and goodness.  But nature itself does not have moral properties such as mercy and goodness.  In fact, much in nature can be lethal.

Here Chesterton illustrates this with the example of the sun.  The first two verses celebrates what’s good about the sun.  Verse three points out that the sun is not a deity, as many of the ancients would have it.  Praying to the sun, or expecting it to care about any person or thing, is pointless.  Verse four ties it all together.

Chesterton on commiting suicide

A Ballade of Suicide

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 his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours–on the wall–
Are drawing a long breath to shout “Hurray!”
The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay–
My uncle’s sword is hanging in the hall–
I see a little cloud all pink and grey–
Perhaps the Rector’s mother will not call–
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way–
I never read the works of Juvenal–
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

The world will have another washing-day;
The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;
Rationalists are growing rational–
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray,
So secret that the very sky seems small–
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

– G. K. Chesterton

Chesterton on the shape of the Earth

Enyvoy

Clear was the night: the moon was young:
The larkspurs in the plots
Mingled their orange with the gold
Of the forget-me-nots.

The poppies seemed a silver mist:
So darkly fell the gloom.
You scarce had guessed yon crimson streaks
Were buttercups in bloom.

But one thing moved: a little child
Crashed through the flower and fern:
And all my soul rose up to greet
The sage of whom I learn.

I looked into his awful eyes:
I waited his decree:
I made ingenious attempts
To sit upon his knee.

The babe upraised his wondering eyes,
And timidly he said,
“A trend towards experiment
In modern minds is bred.

“I feel the will to roam, to learn
By test, experience, nous,
That fire is hot and ocean deep,
And wolves carnivorous.

“My brain demands complexity.”
The lisping cherub cried.
I looked at him, and only said,
“Go on. The world is wide.”

A tear rolled down his pinafore
“Yet from my life must pass
The simple love of sun and moon,
The old games in the grass;

“Now that my back is to my home
Could these again be found?”
I looked on him, and only said,
“Go on. The world is round.”

– G. K. Chesterton, Greybeards at Play

Chesterton on What to Drink

THE SONG OF RIGHT AND WRONG

Feast on wine or fast on water
And your honour shall stand sure,
God Almighty’s son and daughter
He the valiant, she the pure;
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind attentions,
Go and pour them down the sink.

Tea is like the East he grows in,
A great yellow Mandarin
With urbanity of manner
And unconsciousness of sin;
All the women, like a harem,
At his pig-tail troop along;
And, like all the East he grows in,
He is Poison when he’s strong.

Tea, although an Oriental,
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast,
Cocoa is a dull, disloyal,
Lying, crawling cad and clown,
And may very well be grateful
To the fool that takes him down.

As for all the windy waters,
They were rained like tempests down
When good drink had been dishonoured
By the tipplers of the town;
When red wine had brought red ruin
And the death-dance of our times,
Heaven sent us Soda Water
As a torment for our crimes.

– G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton on Turning Around

The tagline of by blog is a quote (from Chesterton of course): “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”  Nevertheless I fear that my posts have been growing deadly serious of late.  I’ve piled up studies and statistics, political opinions, and social commentary.  Little of it has been light, and even my attempts to be light probably haven’t reached that goal.  Chesterton himself, on the other hand, never had trouble taking a light-hearted approach to an important topic.  In this poem he puts a spin (yuk yuk) on the religious life as opposed to worldly pursuit of fame and praise.

BEHIND

I saw an old man like a child,
His blue eyes bright, his white hair wild,
Who turned for ever, and might not stop,
Round and round like an urchin’s top.

‘Fool,’ I cried, ‘while you spin round,
‘Others grow wise, are praised, are crowned.’
Ever the same round road he trod,
‘This is better: I seek for God.’

‘We see the whole world, left and right,
Yet at the blind back hides from sight
The unseen Master that drives us forth
To East and West, to South and North.

‘Over my shoulder for eighty years
I have looked for the gleam of the sphere of spheres.’
‘In all your turning, what have you found?’
‘At least, I know why the world goes round.’

 

Not a bad little dialogue to be squeezed into sixteen lines with perfect rhyme and meter.  It brings home the central point of the Christian understanding of God.  God is unseen, at least most of the time, but is the cause and driving force of the world and everything that happens.  Those who devote their lives to God will miss out on the easily visible measures that the world cares about: prestige and wealth and so forth.  From the world’s perspective, they will appear to be accomplishing nothing, as if they were moving in circles.  Yet at the end, they will truly know why the world goes round.

Your weekly Chesterton

A NOVELTY

Why should I care for the Ages
  Because they are old and grey?
To me, like sudden laughter,
  The stars are fresh and gay;
The world is a daring fancy,
  And finished yesterday.

Why should I bow to the Ages
  Because they were drear and dry?
Slow trees and ripening meadows
  For me go roaring by,
A living charge, a struggle
  To escalade the sky.

The eternal suns and systems,
  Solid and silent all,
To me are stars of an instant,
  Only the fires that fall
From God’s good rocket, rising
  On this night of carnival.

Another Christmas poem from G. K. Chesterton

A Christmas Carol

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,
  His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
  But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast,
  His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
  But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,
  His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
  But here the world’s desire.)

The Christ-child stood at Mary’s knee,
  His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at him.
  And all the stars looked down.

– G. K. Chesterton

Seasons greetings from G. K. Chesterton

A Child of the Snows

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.

– G. K. Chesterton

A poem from Mr. Chesterton

A FAIRY TALE

All things grew upwards, foul and fair:
The great trees fought and beat the air
With monstrous wings that would have flown;
But the old earth clung to her own,
Holding them back from heavenly wars,
Though every flower sprang at the stars.

But he broke free: while all things ceased,
Some hour increasing, he increased.
The town beneath him seemed a map,
Above the church he cocked his cap,
Above the cross his feather flew
Above the birds and still he grew.

The trees turned grass; the clouds were riven;
His feet were mountains lost in heaven;
Through strange new skies he rose alone,
The earth fell from him like a stone,
And his own limbs beneath him far
Seemed tapering down to touch a star.

He reared his head, shaggy and grim,
Staring among the cherubim;
The seven celestial floors he rent,
One crystal dome still o’er him bent:
Above his head, more clear than hope,
All heaven was a microscope.

– G. K. Chesterton

Happy Lepanto Day!

Believe it or not, Lepanto Day is here.  For the uninitiated, this is the anniversary of arguably the most important battle in human history.  On October 7, 1571, a fleet of European galleys under the command of Don John of Austria engaged a much larger Turkish force off the coast of Greece.  The Turks had been massing in preparation for a full-scale invasion of Italy, which, if successful, would be a springboard for further conquests in western Europe and the eventual defeat of western civilization.  If could summarize what happened next, but I don’t need to because the story was put into verse form by none other than G. K. Chesterton.  His epic ballad Lepanto is the great English-language poetic achievement of the twentieth century.

 

Lepanto

     White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
     And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
     There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
     It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
     It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
     For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
     They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
     They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
     And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
     And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
     The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
     The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
     From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
     And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

     Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
     Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
     Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
     The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
     The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
     That once went singing southward when all the world was young.
     In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
     Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
     Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
     Don John of Austria is going to the war,
     Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
     In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
     Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
     Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
     Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
     Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
     Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
     Love-light of Spain–hurrah!
     Death-light of Africa!
     Don John of Austria
     Is riding to the sea.

     Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
     (Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
     He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
     His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
     He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
     And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
     And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
     Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
     Giants and the Genii,
     Multiplex of wing and eye,
     Whose strong obedience broke the sky
     When Solomon was king.

     They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
     From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
     They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
     Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
     On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
     Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
     They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,–
     They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
     And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
     And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
     And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
     For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
     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 at 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.”
     For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
     (Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
     Sudden and still–hurrah!
     Bolt from Iberia!
     Don John of Austria
     Is gone by Alcalar.

     St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
     (Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
     Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
     And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
     He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
     The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
     The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,
     And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
     And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
     And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
     And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,–
     But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
     Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
     Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
     Trumpet that sayeth ha!
         Domino gloria!
     Don John of Austria
     Is shouting to the ships.

     King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
     (Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
     The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
     And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
     He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
     He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
     And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
     Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
     And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
     But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
     Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed–
     Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
     Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
     Gun upon gun, hurrah!
     Don John of Austria
     Has loosed the cannonade.

     The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
     (Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
     The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
     The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
     He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
     The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
     They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
     They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
     And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
     And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
     Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
     Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
     They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
     The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
     They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
     Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
     And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
     Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
     And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign–
     (But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
     Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
     Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
     Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
     Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
     Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
     White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

     Vivat Hispania!
     Domino Gloria!
     Don John of Austria
     Has set his people free!

     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 for ever rides in vain,
     And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade….
     (But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)