Propaganda

“And why does Mr. Chesterton drag Catholic propaganda even into detective stories?” — From a very indulgent reviewer

Under that blue Italian dome,
Men throned the Thunderer in the sky
And still his priests creep forth from Rome
And walk Sub Divo on the sly:
And painters, under priestly strictures,
Must drag the sky into their pictures.

Priests in the School; each astral chart
Must show the sun on pain of sin:
Priests in the Home; in rooms apart
Some windows drag the daylight in
And private portraits still are made
Of cunning blends of light and shade.

Since Jupiter Capitoline
Was set above the storms on high,
No landscape-painter yet has dared
To paint the land above the sky.
Since dead religions will not die,
What of abolishing the sky?

– (1926).

A Second Childhood

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God’s ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber’s dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And I find that I am not dead.

A thrill of thunder in my hair:
Though blackening clouds be plain,
Still I am stung and startled
By the first drop of the rain:
Romance and pride and passion pass
And these are what remain.

Strange crawling carpets of the grass,
Wide windows of the sky;
So in this perilous grace of God
With all my sins go I:
And things grow new though I grow old,
Though I grow old and die.

– (1916-21).

Images

I saw a mirror like the moon
Made splendid by a sunken sun
Framing the wrinkled face of kings
And haloed harlots one by one
And many a judge with livid lips,
And many a thief with thankful eyes,
Like his who climbed the torturing tree
And drank that night in Paradise;
And something like a floating word
Behind a curtain, overheard
By chance, from a strange chamber, found me
“The mirror is a woman’s eyes.”
(Speculum Justitiae, ora pro nobis.)

Rose up through one clear rent of sky
The midmost of a monstrous tower
Far up, far down, all earthly scale
Escaping in its pathless power
Such strength as only burst from sight
In some lost epic vast and wild
Where giants piling up their tower
Were pygmies by the thing they piled.
And the heart knew without a word
A strength below all strength had stirred
Lifting the load of all the world
A woman’s arms under a child.
(Turris Davidica, ora pro nobis.)

Broad was the house of burning gold
Like sunrise standing on the mountains
A million mirrored flames that glowed
On golden peacocks, golden fountains,
As tree by tree stood rayed with flame
Like seven-branched candlestick or fan
All glories in the Age of Gold
Glowed equal when the world began
But a voice speaking dreamily
Said in my ear, but not to me,
“One gold thread of a woman’s hair
Has blown across the eyes of man.”
(Domus Aurea, ora pro nobis.)

Deep in a silver wintry wood
In secret skies where sleepers rove
An ivory turret from the trees
Rose clearer than the sky it clove
Too wan for flame, too warm for snow,
Which gold most delicate would defile
And near but never nearer growing
Though one should labour mile on mile.
And with it — in the flash that brings
Sight of the world of little things,
A woman’s finger lifted up,
A finger lifted with a smile.
(Turris Eburnea, ora pro nobis.)

Down through the purple desolation
Of deserts under stars they strode
Who bore the dark and winged pavilion
Of their ungraven god for load;
Strange if the secret of the skies
Behind low crimson curtains hid,
Or if that vagrant booth defied
The huge hypnotic Pyramid.
Then in an image come and gone,
Green fields and one that stood thereon
Flashed like green lightning; and the thunder
“A woman was his walking home”
(Feoderis Arca, ora pro nobis.)

O breakers! Great iconoclasts!
When will your raking hammers find
What statues spring up with a word,
What icons have built up the mind,
Or learn by hacking if the Form
Be all a part or part a whole,
Or grind out of your gods made dust
What is the sign and what the soul
Or chase what images have hung
In the air where any song was sung,
Seeing if the sword can put asunder
All that was wedded with the tongue?
(Sedes Sapientiae, ora pro nobis.)

– (1926).

The Song Against Songs

The song of the sorrow of Melisande
Is a weary song and a dreary song,
The glory of Mariana’s grange
Had got into great decay,
The song of the Raven Never More
Has never been called a cheery song,
And the brightest things in Baudelaire
Are anything else but gay.

But who will write us a riding song,
Or a hunting song or a drinking song,
Fit for them that arose and rode
When day and the wine were red?
But bring me a quart of claret out,
And I will write you a clinking song,
A song of war and a song of wine
And a song to wake the dead.

The song of the fury of Fragolette
Is a florid song and a torrid song,
The song of the sorrow of Tara
Is sung to a harp unstrung,
The song of the cheerful Shropshire Lad
I consider a perfectly horrid song,
And the song of the happy Futurist
Is a song that can’t be sung.

But who will write us a riding song
Or a fighting song or a drinking song,
Fit for the fathers of you and me,
That knew how to think and thrive?
But the song of Beauty and Art and Love
Is simply an utterly stinking song,
To double you up and drag you down
And damn your soul alive.

– (1912).

Lines Written in a Picture Book

This is the sort of book we like
(For you and I are very small),
With pictures stuck in anyhow,
And hardly any words at all.

You will not understand a word
Of all the words, including mine;
Never you trouble; you can see,
And all directness is divine —

Stand up and keep your childishness:
Read all the pedants’ screeds and strictures;
But don’t believe in anything
That can’t be told in coloured pictures.

– (1906-12).

The Logical Vegetarian

You will find me drinking rum,
Like a sailor in a slum,
You will find me drinking beer like a Bavarian.
You will find me drinking gin
In the lowest kind of inn
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.

So I cleared the inn of wine,
And I tried to climb the sign,
And I tried to hail the constable as “Marion.”
But he said I couldn’t speak,
And he bowled me to the Beak
Because I was a Happy Vegetarian.

Oh, I know a Doctor Gluck,
And his nose it had a hook,
And his attitudes were anything but Aryan;
So I gave him all the pork
That I had, upon a fork
Because I am myself a Vegetarian.

I am silent in the Club,
I am silent in the pub,
I am silent on a bally peak in Darien;
For I stuff away for life
Shoving peas in with a knife,
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.

No more the milk of cows
Shall pollute my private house
Than the milk of the wild mares of the Barbarian.
I will stick to port and sherry,
For they are so very, very,
So very, very, very Vegetarian.

– (1913).

Miracles

A humble man moved o’er the down
Beneath a hill-hid eastern town.
He viewed all mildly, like a King,
And, like a child, touched everything.
The sheep around, the bird above,
Were gathered to his lonely love.
He passed the cloud, the sparrow’s wing,
And left them all a song to sing.

He touched the wild flowers, and they flame,
Red banners of his royal name,
Tall fiery symbols of his heart
That, careless, in God’s gifts take part,
Signs of the tranquil blaze that shone
About the gentler Solomon.
He moved, and touched them with a spell,
And left them all a tale to tell.

He brake the bread, he filled the wine
That gleamed into a blood-red sign.
The coarsest grain to blessings turned,
The dimmest wine in glory burned
To knit in glistening bonds and rare
His own together everywhere,
Even as the board bound true as He
The unlettered twelve of Galilee.
He touched the common food of man
And left it with a gracious plan.

– (c.1893).

The Christ-Child Lay on Mary’s Lap

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.

– (late 1890s).

The Truce of Christmas

Passionate peace is in the sky –
And in the snow in silver sealed
The beasts are perfect in the field,
And men seem men so suddenly –
(But take ten swords and ten times ten
And blow the bugle in praising men;
For we are for all men under the sun,
And they are against us every one;
And misers haggle and madmen clutch,
And there is peril in praising much.
And we have the terrible tongues uncurled
That praise the world to the sons of the world.)

The idle humble hill and wood
Are bowed upon the sacred birth,
And for one little hour the earth
Is lazy with the love of good –
(But ready are you, and ready am I,
If the battle blow and the guns go by;
For we are for all men under the sun,
And they are against us every one;
And the men that hate herd all together,
To pride and gold, and the great white feather
And the thing is graven in star and stone
That the men who love are all alone.)

Hunger is hard and time is tough,
But bless the beggars and kiss the kings,
For hope has broken the heart of things,
And nothing was ever praised enough.
(But bold the shield for a sudden swing
And point the sword when you praise a thing,
For we are for all men under the sun,
And they are against us every one;
And mime and merchant, thane and thrall
Hate us because we love them all;
Only till Christmastide go by
Passionate peace is in the sky.)

– (1904).

Warsash, 1917

The clotted woods are dim, the day
Ever expires and still expands:
The River finds its wandering way
From what unfathomable lands,
And God who made our hearts so great,
Our little hearts that hold the world,
Hangs this high moment with a weight
Of banners drooping, but not furled.

For we too broaden though we fade,
And we too deepen though we die,
Waste in what fashion we were made
And die of immortality –
And something rooted like the tree
Can hear unquelled, although it quiver,
Ancestral voices of the sea
That call the unreturning river.

Wide windows of the soul enlightened
Of these wide waters and the light –
Seeing whatever stars have brightened
Since eyes of men were sad and bright.
Fear not the dust or dusk hereafter
That darkens this dear land and leaves
The loves that found us and the laughter
Upon so many summer eves.

For not in rains of weeping rotten
Nor choked in thorns of thwarting, ends
The greatness of the unforgotten,
The silence of the pride of friends.
And sad with songs yet good and gay
And weak with no ignoble things
We look on this white waste of day
Where silence is alone and sings.

The clustered trees are all a cloud,
A vision and a voiceless wraith;
Fading in fulness, like a cloud
Of final thoughts that fade to faith:
But richer than the jewelled nights
That build beyond Southampton Bar
A ladder for the harbour-lights
From England to the evening star.

– (1917).