Part 14 (1/2)

Walt Whitman and Gilbert K. Chesterton seem a strange combination. But Chesterton himself has acknowledged that he found in ”Leaves of Gra.s.s” a great and wholesome inspiration. This seems strange to us, for the American Whitmanite or Whitmaniac is a pale long-haired creature of many 'isms, directly the opposite of a robust Christian like Chesterton. But in the eighteen-nineties when ”science announced nonent.i.ty and art admired decay” Walt Whitman's ”barbaric yawp sounding over the roofs of the world” seemed a healthy sound. So in his dedication to ”The Man Who Was Thursday,” Chesterton writes:

Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled; Some giants laboured in that crowd to lift it from the world.

I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things; And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pa.s.s, Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of gra.s.s; Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain-- Truth out of Tusitala, spoke and pleasure out of pain.

Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey, Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.

But we were young; we lived to see G.o.d break the bitter charms, G.o.d and the good Republic come riding back in arms: We have seen the city of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved-- Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.

For some reason, it is difficult to think of Chesterton in love. We can readily think of him fighting or praying, but to think of him making love requires an effort of the imagination. Yet he is happily married, and while his love poems are few, they are n.o.ble in thought and beautiful in expression. One of the most personal and characteristic of them is that to which he gives the name ”Confessional.”

CONFESSIONAL

Now that I kneel at the throne, O Queen, Pity and pardon me.

Much have I striven to sing the same, Brother of beast and tree; Yet when the stars catch me alone Never a linnet sings-- And the blood of a man is a bitter voice And cries for foolish things.

Not for me be the vaunt of woe; Was not I from a boy Vowed with the helmet and spear and spur To the blood-red banner of joy?

A man may sing his psalms to a stone, Pour his blood for a weed, But the tears of a man are a sudden thing, And come not of his creed.

Nay, but the earth is kind to me, Though I cried for a star, Leaves and gra.s.ses, feather and flower, Cover the foolish scar, Prophets and saints and seraphim Lighten the load with song, And the heart of a man is a heavy load For a man to bear along.

Many poets are writing of war these days. But they write of war too self-consciously, they are too sophisticated, too grown-up. They are so busy getting lessons from the war, describing its moral and social significance, that they have nothing to say about the actual facts of battle. But Chesterton's war poems are splendid primitive things, full of the thunder of cras.h.i.+ng arms, of courage and of faith. I think that his ”Lepanto” is without an equal among the war poems of the century. It begins as follows:

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 s.h.i.+ps.

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 gla.s.s; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Ma.s.s; 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, 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 curles, 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 peac.o.c.k 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.

If any living poet deserves to be called the laureate of democracy, that poet is Gilbert K. Chesterton. I do not base this statement so much on his serious poems in praise of democracy, as on his light verse. In his gay ballades, full of rollicking humor, we find every now and then a bit of shrewd satire, a devastating criticism of the false leaders, of the hypocrites and tyrants who sit in high places. Better than any other writer of our day, Chesterton knows how to drive his rapier of rhyme to the very heart of hypocrisy and injustice. There is sound social and moral criticism back of the irresistible nonsense of ”A Ballade of Suicide”:

A BALLADE OF SUICIDE