Complete Works of G K Chesterton, page 394
Emmanuel, prophet, anointed,
A child is born.
And thou, that art still in thy cradle,
The sun being crown for thy brow.
Make answer, our flesh, make an answer,
Say, whence art thou come — who art thou?
Art thou come back on earth for our teaching
To train or to warn — ?
Hush — how may we know? — knowing only
A child is born.
A CHILD OF THE SNOWS
There is heard a hymn when the panes 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.
A WORD
A word came forth in Galilee, a word like to a star;
It climbed and rang and blessed and burnt wherever brave hearts are;
A word of sudden secret hope, of trial and increase
Of wrath and pity fused in fire, and passion kissing peace.
A star that o’er the citied world beckoned, a sword of flame;
A star with myriad thunders tongued: a mighty word there came.
The wedge’s dart passed into it, the groan of timberwains,
The ringing of the rivet nails, the shrieking of the planes;
The hammering on the roofs at morn, the busy workshop roar;
The hiss of shavings drifted deep along the windy floor;
The heat-browned toiler’s crooning song, the hum of human worth —
Mingled of all the noise of crafts, the ringing word went forth.
The splash of nets passed into it, the grind of sand and shell,
The boat-hook’s clash, the boat-oars’ jar, the cries to buy and sell,
The flapping of the landed shoals, the canvas crackling free,
And through all varied notes and cries, the roaring of the sea,
The noise of little lives and brave, of needy lives and high;
In gathering all the throes of earth, the living word went by.
Earth’s giant sins bowed down to it, in Empire’s huge eclipse,
When darkness sat above the thrones, seven thunders on her lips,
The woe of cities entered it, the clang of idols’ falls,
The scream of filthy Caesars stabbed high in their brazen halls,
The dim hoarse Hoods of naked men, the worldrealms snapping girth,
The trumpets of Apocalypse, the darkness of the earth:
The wrath that brake the eternal lamp and hid the eternal hill,
A world’s destruction loading, the word went onward still —
The blaze of creeds passed into it, the hiss of horrid fires,
The headlong spear, the scarlet cross, the hair-shirt and the briars,
The cloistered brethren’s thunderous chaunt, the errant champion’s song,
The shifting of the crowns and thrones, the tangle of the strong.
The shattering fall of crest and crown and shield and cross and cope,
The tearing of the gauds of time, the blight of prince and pope,
The reign of ragged millions leagued to wrench a loaded debt,
Loud with the many throated roar, the word went forward yet.
The song of wheels passed into it, the roaring and the smoke
The riddle of the want and wage, the fogs that burn and choke.
The breaking of the girths of gold, the needs that creep and swell.
The strengthening hope, the dazing light, the deafening evangel,
Through kingdoms dead and empires damned, through changes without cease,
With earthquake, chaos, born and fed, rose, — and the word was “Peace.”
RHYMES FOR THE TIMES
ANTICHRIST, OR THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM: AN ODE
“A BILL WHICH HAS SHOCKED THE CONSCIENCE OF
EVERY CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN EUROPE.” —
Mr. F.E. Smith, ON THE WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT BILL.
Are they clinging to their crosses,
F.E. Smith,
Where the Breton boat-fleet tosses,
Are they, Smith?
Do they, fasting, tramping, bleeding,
Wait the news from this our city?
Groaning “That’s the Second Reading!”
Hissing “There is still Committed”
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!
THE REVOLUTIONIST: OR LINES TO A STATESMAN
“I WAS NEVER STANDING BY WHILE A REVOLUTION
WAS GOING ON.” — Speech by the Rt. Hon. Walter Long.
When Death was on thy drums, Democracy,
And with one rush of slaves the world was free,
In that high dawn that Kings shall not forget,
A void there was and Walter was not yet.
Through sacked Versailles, at Valmy in the fray,
They did without him in some kind of way;
Red Christendom all Walterless they cross,
And in their fury hardly feel their loss....
Fades the Republic; faint as Roland’s horn,
Her trumpets taunt us with a sacred scorn....
Then silence fell; and Mr. Long was born.
From his first hours in his expensive cot
He never saw the tiniest viscount shot.
In deference to his wealthy parents’ whim
The wildest massacres were kept from him.
The wars that dyed Pall Mall and Brompton red
Passed harmless o’er that one unconscious head:
For all that little Long could understand
The rich might still be rulers of the land.
Vain are the pious arts of parenthood,
Foiled Revolution bubbled in his blood;
Until one day (the babe unborn shall rue it)
The Constitution bored him and he slew it.
If I were wise and good and rich and strong —
Fond, impious thought, if I were Walter Long —
If I could water sell like molten gold,
And make grown people do as they are told,
If over private fields and wastes as wide
As a Greek city for which heroes died,
I owned the houses and the men inside —
If all this hung on one thin thread of habit
I would not revolutionize a rabbit.
I would sit tight with all my gifts and glories,
And even preach to unconverted Tories,
That the fixed system that our land inherits,
Viewed from a certain standpoint, has its merits.
I’d guard the laws like any Radical,
And keep each precedent, however small,
However subtle, misty, dusty, dreamy,
Lest man by chance should look at me and see me;
Lest men should ask what madman made me lord
Of English ploughshares and the English sword;
Lest men should mark how sleepy is the nod
That drills the dreadful images of God!
Walter, be wise! avoid the wild and new,
The Constitution is the game for you.
Walter, beware! scorn not the gathering throng
It suffers, yet it may not suffer wrong,
It suffers, yet it cannot suffer Long.
And if you goad it these grey rules to break,
For a few pence, see that you do not wake
Death and the splendour of the scarlet cap,
Boston and Valmy, Yorktown and Jemmappes,
Freedom in arms, the riding and the routing,
The thunder of the captains and the shouting,
All that lost riot that you did not share — And
when that riot comes — you will be there.
THE SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL
Lord Lilac thought it rather rotten
That Shakespeare should be quite
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 Comyns Carr,
Two dukes and a dramatic star,
Also a clergyman 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 come 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 Comyns 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.
THE HORRIBLE HISTORY OF JONES
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,
Inspectors took the chain away;
Whereat the canine barked “hurray”!
At which, of course, the S.P.U.
(Whose Nervous Motorists’ Bill was through),
Were forced to give the dog in charge
For being Audibly at Large.
None, you will say, were now annoyed,
Save haply Jones — the yard was void.
But something being in the lease
About “alarms to aid police,”
The U.S.U. annexed the yard
For having no sufficient guards
Now if there’s one condition
The C.C.P. are strong upon
It is that every house one buys
Must have a yard for exercise;
So Jones, as tenant, was unfit.
His state of health was proof of it.
Two doctors of the T.T.U.’s
Told him his legs from long disuse,
Were atrophied; and saying “So
From step to higher step we go
Till everything is New and True,”
They cut his legs off and withdrew.
You know the E.T.S.T.’s views
Are stronger than the T.T.U.’s:
And soon (as one may say) took wing
The Arms, though not the Man, I sing.
To see him sitting limbless there
Was more than the K.K. could bear
“In mercy silence with all speed
That mouth there are no hands to feed;
What cruel sentimentalist,
O Jones, would doom thee to exist —
Clinging to selfish Selfhood yet?
Weak one! Such reasoning might upset
The Pump Act, and the accumulation
Of all constructive legislation;
Let us construct you up a bit—”
The head fell off when it was hit:
Then words did rise and honest doubt,
And four Commissions 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 old and just renown
Where Freedom slowly broadened down
From Precedent to Precedent....
And this, I think, was what he meant.
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 hen-ens 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 philanthropy
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 sores of things —
And rose from Under-Sec. to Sec.
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;
Never did dream of hell or wrath
Turn Viscount Grubby from his path;
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.
IN MEMORIAM P.D.
NICE, JANUARY 30, 1914.
If any in an island cradle curled
Of comfort, may make offerings to you,
Who in the day of all denial blew
A bugle through the blackness of the world,
An English hand would touch your shroud, in trust
That truth again be told in English speech.
And we too yet may practise what we preach,
Though it were practising the bayonet thrust.
Cutting that giant neck from sand to sand,
From sea to sea; it was a little thing
Beside your sudden shout and sabre-swing
That cut the throat of thieves in every land.
Heed not if half-wits mock your broken blade:
Mammon our master doeth all things ill.
You are the Fool that charged a windmill. Still,
The Miller is a Knave; and was afraid.
Lay down your sword. Ruin will know her own.
Let each small statesman sow his weak wild oat,
Or turn his coat to decorate his coat,
Or take the throne and perish by the throne.
Lay down your sword. And let the White Flag fade
To grey; and let the Red Flag fade to pink,
For these that climb and climb; and cannot sink
So deep as death and honour, Déroulède.
SONNET WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON
TO A POPULAR LEADER MUCH TO BE CONGRATULATED
ON THE AVOIDANCE OF A STRIKE AT CHRISTMAS.
I know you. You will hail the huge release,
Saying the sheathing of a thousand swords,
In silence and injustice, well accords
With Christmas bells. And you will gild with grease
The papers, the employers, the police,
