A Cider Song

THE wine they drink in Paradise

They make in Haute Lorraine;

God brought it burning from the sod

To be a sign and signal rod

That they that drink the blood of God

Shall never thirst again.

The wine they praise in Paradise

They make in Ponterey,

The purple wine of Paradise,

But we have better at the price;

It's wine they praise in Paradise,

It's cider that they pray.

The wine they want in Paradise

They find in Plodder's End,

The apple wine of Herford,

Of Hafod Hill and Herford,

Where woods went down to Herford,

And there I had a friend.

The soft feet of the blessed go

In the soft western vales,

The road of the silent saints accord,

The road from heaven to Herford,

Where the apple wood of Herford

Goes all the way to Wales.

G. K. Chesterton

Antichrist, or the Reunion of Christendom: An Ode

ARE they clinging to their crosses,

                                F.E. Smith,

Where the Breton boat-fleet tosses,

                                Are they, Smith?

Do they, fasting, trembling, bleeding,

Wait the news from this our city?

Groaning 'That's the Second Reading!'

Hissing 'There is still Committee!'

If the voice of Cecil falters,

If McKenna's point has pith,

Do they tremble for their altars?

                                Do they, Smith?

Russian peasants round their pope

                                Huddled, Smith,

Hear about it all, I hope,

                                Don't they, Smith?

In the mountain hamlets clothing

Peaks beyond Caucasian pales,

Where Establishment means nothing

And they never heard of Wales,

Do they read it all in Hansard

With a crib to read it with --

'Welsh Tithes: Dr Clifford Answered.'

                                Really, Smith?

In the lands where Christians were,

                                F.E. Smith,

In the little lands laid bare,

                                Smith, O Smith!

Where the Turkish bands are busy

And the Tory name is blessed

Since they hailed the Cross of Dizzy

On the banners from the West!

Men don't think it half so hard if

Islam burns their kin and kith,

Since a curate lives in Cardiff

                                Saved by Smith.

It would greatly, I must own,

                                Soothe me, Smith!

If you left this theme alone,

                                Holy Smith!

For your legal cause or civil

You fight well and get your fee;

For your God or dream or devil

You will answer, not to me.

Talk about the pews and steeples

And the Cash that goes therewith!

But the souls of Christian peoples . . .

                                Chuck it, Smith!

G. K. Chesterton

A Song of Defeat

THE line breaks and the guns go under,

The lords and the lackeys ride the plain;

I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder,

And the whole of my heart grows young again.

For our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;

Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;

Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,

And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.

But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle,

As once in my life they throbbed and reeled;

I have found my youth in the lost battle,

I have found my heart on the battlefield.

    For we that fight till the world is free,

    We are not easy in victory:

    We have known each other too long, my brother,

    And fought each other, the world and we.

And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,

And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint,

When we were angry and poor and happy,

And proud of seeing our names in print.

For so they conquered and so we scattered,

When the Devil road and his dogs smelt gold,

And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered;

When I was twenty and odd years old.

When the mongrel men that the market classes

Had slimy hands upon England's rod,

And sword in hand upon Afric's passes

Her last Republic cried to God.

    For the men no lords can buy or sell,

    They sit not easy when all goes well,

    They have said to each other what naught can smother,

    They have seen each other, our souls and hell.

It is all as of old, the empty clangour,

The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page,

The huckster who, mocking holy anger,

Painfully paints his face with rage.

And the faith of the poor is faint and partial,

And the pride of the rich is all for sale,

And the chosen heralds of England's Marshal

Are the sandwich-men of the Daily Mail,

And the niggards that dare not give are glutted,

And the feeble that dare not fail are strong,

So while the City of Toil is gutted,

I sit in the saddle and sing my song.

    For we that fight till the world is free,

    We have no comfort in victory;

    We have read each other as Cain his brother,

    We know each other, these slaves and we.

G. K. Chesterton

The New Freethinker

JOHN Grubby who was short and stout

And troubled with religious doubt,

Refused about the age of three

To sit upon the curate's knee;

(For so the eternal strife must rage

Between the spirit of the age

And Dogma, which, as is well known,

Does simply hate to be outgrown).

Grubby, the young idea that shoots,

Outgrew the ages like old boots;

While still, to all appearance, small,

Would have no Miracles at all;

And just before the age of ten

Firmly refused Free Will to men.

The altars reeled, the heavens shook,

Just as he read of in the book;

Flung from his house went forth the youth

Alone with tempests and the Truth.

Up to the distant city and dim

Where his papa had bought for him

A partnership in Chepe and Deer

Worth, say twelve hundred pounds a year.

But he was resolute. Lord Brute

Had found him useful; and Lord Loot,

With whom few other men would act,

Valued his promptitude and tact;

Never did even philanthrophy

Enrich a man more rapidly:

'Twas he that stopped the Strike in Coal,

For hungry children racked his soul;

To end their misery there and then

He filled the mines with Chinamen

Sat in that House that broke the Kings,

And voted for all sorts of things --

And rose from Under-Sec. to Sec.

With scarce a murmur or a check.

Some grumbled. Growlers who gave less

Than generous worship to success,

The little printers in Dundee,

Who got ten years for blasphemy,

(Although he let them off with seven)

Respect him rather less than heaven.

No matter. This can still be said:

Never to supernatural dread

Never to unseen deity,

Did Sir John Grubby bend the knee;

Nor was he bribed by fabled bliss

To kneel to any world but this.

The curate lives in Camden Town,

His lap still empty of renown,

And still across the waste of years

John Grubby, in the House of Peers,

Faces that curate, proud and free,

And never sits upon his knee.

G. K. Chesterton

A Hymn

O GOD of earth and altar,

Bow down and hear our cry.

Our earthly rulers falter,

Our people drift and die;

The walls of gold entomb us,

The swords of scorn divide,

Take not thy thunder from us,

But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,

From lies of tongue and pen,

From all the easy speeches

That comfort cruel men,

For sale and profanation

Of honour and the sword,

From sleep and from damnation,

Deliver us, good lord.

Tie in a living tether

The prince and priest and thrall,

Bind all our lives together,

Smite us and save us all;

In ire and exultation

Aflame with faith, and free,

Lift up a living nation,

A single sword to thee.

G. K. Chesterton

The Shakespeare Memorial

LORD Lilac thought it rather rotten

That Shakespeare should be quite forgotten,

And therefore got on a Committee

With several chaps out of the City,

And Shorter and Sir Herbert Tree,

Lord Rothschild and Lord Rosebery,

And F.C.G. and Comyn Carr

Two dukes and a dramatic star,

Also a clergy man now dead;

And while the vain world careless sped

Unheeding the heroic name --

The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame

Still sat unconquered in a ring,

Remembering him like anything.

Lord Lilac did not long remain,

Lord Lilac did not some again.

He softly lit a cigarette

And sought some other social set

Where, in some other knots or rings,

People were doing cultured things.

-- Miss Zwilt's Humane Vivarium

-- The little men that paint on gum

-- The exquisite Gorilla Girl . . .

He sometimes, in this giddy whirl

(Not being really bad at heart),

Remembered Shakespeare with a start --

But not with that grand constancy

Of Clement Shorter, Herbert Tree,

Lord Rosebery and Comyn Carr

And all the other names there are;

Who stuck like limpets to the spot,

Lest they forgot, lest they forgot.

Lord Lilac was of slighter stuff;

Lord Lilac had had quite enough.

G. K. Chesterton

The Secret People

SMILE at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget.

For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.

There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,

There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.

There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.

There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;

You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:

Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.

The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.

We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.

The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;

There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.

And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,

And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day.

They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind.

Till there was not bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.

The inns of God where no main paid, that were the wall of the weak,

The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.

And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King:

He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.

The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits,

And the men of the new religion, with their bibles in their boots,

We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,

And some were pure and some were vile, but none took heed of us.

We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;

And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.

A war that we understood not came over the world and woke

Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.

They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people's reign:

And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and never scorned us again.

Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;

Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that were were men.

In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albeura plains,

We did and died like lions, to keep ouselves in chains.

We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not

The strange face of the Frenchman who know for what they fought,

And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke;

And we broke our own right with him. And still we never spoke.

Our patch of glory ended; we never heard guns again.

But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain.

He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,

He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.

Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,

Come back in shining shapes at last to spil his last carouse:

We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,

And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,

Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.

They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;

They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.

And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,

Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,

Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.

It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,

Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.

It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest

God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.

Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

G. K. Chesterton

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 today.

Tomorrow 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 today.

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 today.

Envoi

Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,

The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;

Even today your royal head may fall --

I think I will not hang myself today.

G. K. Chesterton

The Donkey

W HEN fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry

And ears like errant wings,

The devil's walking parody

On all four-footed things.

The tatter'd outlaw of the earth

Of ancient crooked will

Starve, scourge, deride me, I am dumb

I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet:

There was a shout about my ears,

And palms before my feet.

G. K. Chesterton