Chestertonian Moment (It's a true story!)

Step falls on step, just like the day before
Falls flat on floor (it's on Nebraska ground),
Eyes view white walls, and closed and opened doors
No laughter gleams, and no scared heartes pound.
The statue stands as he has always stood
Upon his pedestal of cubic wood
The carpet's clean, just as it ought to be
So free of clutter that it looks empty.
It grabs my head and whips it straight around
I cry: "I say! Where did all of it go?
There's nothing here! This is such empty ground!
And Andy says: "It's like this always, though."
The hallway is just as its sposed to be
But never has it been so wonderf'ly.

A Poem Concerning Cheese

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese"

--G.K. Chesterton

White as ivory, white as milk,
White as Clare Assisi, white as silk
(Did you know that Silk®’s illegal?
Even though it’s rich and regal?)
White as anything you please
Is a mozzarella cheese.

Sharp as lemons, sharp as cans
Sharp as vinegar, sharp as band’s
Pipe-flutes played by amateurs
Sharps not a pain, but pleasures
And the sharper is the better
In the cheese that is called cheddar.

You’d think that cows ate sky, not grass
When sensing cheese that’s all high-class,
One is filled with love and loathing
For cheese that’s molding, not betrothing.
With odor strong and jeweled hue
The cheese we’re speaking of is Blue.

One cheese holds a magic spell
The cheese that can an epic tell
With sunny shores and marble rows
With pagan grandeur and repose
With light and wisdom it is graced
Feta, the cheese for classic tastes.

I think I know why we’re not pleased
To write poems on the glorious cheese.
Cheese does not laugh, does not inibreiate
And how can one describe a taste?
All tastes are all mystifying
More than one poem would be boring.

Frances Chesterton

Apparently, one of the poems of Frances Chesterton has been set to music. visit

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/c.asp?c=C1077

To get your search started.

By request: The Ballad of an ALMOST-Dead Blog

In the deeps of e-space, that gives birth, (like a god,
From nothing), to websites, text sites, journals, and blogs,
There lived The Chesterteens, fairest blog, and first.
(If you won’t post a comment, I will write verse) .

She collected some children, put them ’neath her wing,
And from them, learned Chesterton’s truth of many things.
O! for those old days when this blog fairly burst!
When some would write comments, and some would write verse!

For many long months, she lived with life bounding
For, being like mind, she could live on posting
But then things fell silent, so low that I durst
Say “If you won’t comment, then I will write verse.”

Her falling was caused by both lover and dragon
The beast was a failure, the lover a human
Together they threatened to send her a hearse
For one could not comment, the other wrote verse!

Until the over-poster, realizing his crime
Decided to combat the disaster with rhyme
And with full satire, he said with a burst
“If you won’t post a comment, I will write verse.”

And suddenly galloping like knights to her aid
Came two handsome comments. Her peril they stayed!
One was old Dr. Thursday’s, t’other’s Mom Who Learn’st’s
They posted a comment, I ought not write verse.

But in a brave effort to renew the blog’s quest
These two learned typing heroes made a request
For newly-wrote poetry, they have a thirst
Despite their two comments, I still have writ verse!

Beware!

If somebody doesn't start posting or commenting, I will write a poem, "Lament to a dead blog." And nobody wants that except me.

Thank a computer scientist...

In response to Dr. Thursday's request, I have written a work of verse fiction. Please visit

A Request, a Falsehood and a Wishful Thought

to read it. It is very Chestertonian.

The Everlasting Ape-Man: A Modern Myth

"If the critic of mythology, upon hearing that the world was once nothing but a great feathered serpent, did not get an urge to kick his heels like a child and half-wish it were true, he is no judge of such things."

(loose quotation of a passage from The Everlasting Man)

And what does this have to do with anything? Consider this:
According to "Prehistoric Journey," an exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the creature we call a whale came about in something like this way:

"At some point in time, the creatures we call animals came up out of the water, and began to live as land life-forms. These developed into diverse forms. Among these were the animals of the highest sort: the complex, motherly, and beautiful creatures we call mammals.
One of these animals was somewhat similar to the modern tiger, with carnivorous habits, orange-and-black striped fur (author's aside: why they illustrated him such, I shall never know, except that it looks cool), and claws. Spurred on by the inevetible destiny of evolution, it returned to its original home, the sea. Its ferocious nature, in the company of the serenity of the ocean, turned graudually or by leaps and bounds into the gentle and large creature we know as the whale."

I don't know about you, but I don't believe a word of it. I also find this idea, and indeed, all the ideas of evolution, to be highly poetic. I almost wish that I wished it were true. Why? Because evolution is a myth in the grand, Chestertonian sense of the word?

First: Chesterton says in The Everlasting Man, that myths are products of the human imagination, and that they are divorced from reason, a fact attested to by the philosophers who consistently disbelieved the myths, with their unworshippable objects of worship. To my knowledge (I do not wish to bore you with science here, although I am prepared to explain in the comments box), evolution on the scale espoused by the makers of "Prehistoric Journey" is practically impossible, and unworthy of belief. For this very reason, only imagination could have come up with these fascinating theories. Think of "Nebraska Man," for example, a creative imaginative construct based on a tooth. The evocative power of this biological artistry shows in the poetic response given to it by a disbeliever.

Second: Chesterton also says that mythology satisfied several human needs, such as the need for sacrifice and the need for doing certain things at certain times. Sincere believers in evolution sacrifice a great deal of time and effort, some of the most valuble things they have, in devotion to their beliefs. Whether they are right or wrong has no effect on the fact that they pay homage (not worship, of course) to the object of their either logical or illogical faith. Additionally, whenever they study anything relating to geology or fossils, they feel compelled to insert, with a regularity that seems almost ritualistic, their belief in this phenomenon, allowing it to affect their facts, their judgments, and their presentations. Indeed, one could even make a case that evolution was a greater mythology than the pagan beliefs, for the pagans sacrificed grain and cows, but the scientists ritually place their very minds in the service of Lady Evolution.

Third: Chesterton says that if he were to cease being a Catholic, he would become a pagan, and make the very trees holy places. Now, of course, the animals of the past are not worshipped, but they do acquire a sort of feudal dignity that they did not have before under the governance of this theory. In addition to their dignity as creations of God, every plant and animal is suddenly a recipient of a (albeit diluted) human emotion of pleasant surpise and greater wonder, for The Earth is our Mother, and the Sea Urchin our long-lost cousin.

So, whether you believe in evolution or not, treat it as Chesterton treated the Iliad, as a literary treasure, a thing of poetic beauty regardless of its truth.

Come my friends, leave your quarrels and cares and indulge in a mug of poetry!

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is my favorite GK book, but nothing beats The Flying Inn for verse!

* * * * *

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 at heart a 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.

Post #200!

200 posts!!!! Hurray!!!! And our second anniversary is coming up soon too! Anyways, it's thursday....

Poetry Thursday- For a War Memorial

The hucksters haggle in the mart
The cars and carts go by;
Senates and schools go droning on;
For dead things cannot die.
A storm stooped on the place of tombs
With bolts to blast and rive;
But these be names of many men
The lightning found alive.

If usurers rule and rights decay
And visions view once more
Great Carthage like a golden shell
Gape hollow on the shore,
Still to the last of crumbling time
Upon this stone be read
How many men of England died
To prove they were not dead.

**************

At our catechism discussion earlier this evening GilbertGirl and I decided that the following quote from Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI was worthy of posting here:

And the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us (John 1:14)

Poetry Thursday- The Strange Music

Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack,
But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon my back,
Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret,
Still, my hope is all before me; for I cannot play it yet.

In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath e'er let fall,
In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;
Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame,
Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name.

Not as mine, my soul's annointed, not as mine the rude and light
Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight;
Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar,
Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.

But on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once,
Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce.
But I will not fear to match them - no by God, I will not fear,
I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.

Poetry

Even if it isn't Thursday(:

The Praise of Dust

"What of vile dust?" the preacher said.
Methought the whole world woke,
The dead stone lived beneath my foot,
And my whole body spoke.

"You, that play tyrant to the dust,
And stamp its wrinkled face,
This patient star that flings you not
Far into homeless space."

Come down out of your dusty shrine
The living dust to see,
The flowers that at your sermon's end
Stand blazing silently.

"Rich white and blood-red blossom; stones,
Lichens like fire encrust;
A gleam of blue, a glare of gold,
The vision of the dust.

"Pass them all by: till, as you come
Where, at a city's edge,
Under a tree--I know it well--
Under a lattice ledge,

"The sunshine falls on one brown head.
You, too, O cold of clay,
ater of stones, may haply hear
The trumpets of that day

"When God to all his paladins
By his own splendour swore
To make a fairer face than heaven,
Of dust and nothing more."

Poetry Thursday- The Mystery

I think I may have posted this before, I can't remember, but I think it bears repeating. Again, thanks to this marvelous site.

If sunset clouds could grow on trees
It would but match the may in flower;
And skies be underneath the seas
No topsyturvier than a shower.

If mountains rose on wings to wander
They were no wilder than a cloud;
Yet all my praise is mean as slander,
Mean as these mean words spoken aloud.

And never more than now I know
That man's first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph's blow
Has left him in the garden blind.

Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.

P.S. For those who were wondering about the absence of Father Brown Friday... I have consulted the committee and we have decided to have them monthly rather then weekly. This will allow more time for discussion, for reading the story, and hopefully bring about very good discussion questions. So for our next discussion (I'm not yet sure when that will be) the story is The Queer Feet (story #3 of The Innocence). And if you're bored (or even if you're not) please do join in our previous discussions of The Blue Cross and The Flying Stars.

Poetry Thursday

To Belloc (Preface to The Napolean of Notting Hill)

For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree;
You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
A Sussex moon, untravelled still,
I saw a moon that was the town's,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill.

Yea; Heaven is everywhere at home
The big blue cap that always fits,
And so it is (be calm; they come
To goal at last, my wandering wits),
So is it with the heroic thing;
This shall not end for the world's end
And though the sullen engines swing,
Be you not much afraid, my friend.

This did not end by Nelson's urn
Where an immortal England sits--
Nor where your tall young men in turn
Drank death like wine at Austerlitz.
And when the pedants bade us mark
What cold mechanic happenings
Must come; our souls said in the dark,
"Belike; but there are likelier things."

Likelier across these flats afar
These sulky levels smooth and free
The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty;
Likelier the barricades shall blare
Slaughter below and smoke above,
And death and hate and hell declare
That men have found a thing to love.

Far from your sunny uplands set
I saw the dream; the streets I trod
The lit straight streets shot out and met
The starry streets that point to God.
This legend of an epic hour
A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
Under the great grey water-tower
That strikes the stars on Campden Hill

Poetry Thursday- St. Francis Xavier

I believe Chesterton wrote this for a poetry contest in his school days.

He left his dust, by all the myriad tread
Of yon dense millions trampled to the strand,
Or 'neath some cross forgotten lays his head
Where dark seas whiten on a lonely land:
He left his work, what all his life had planned,
A waning flame to flicker and to fall,
Mid the huge myths his toil could scarce withstand,
And the light died in temple and in hall,
And the old twilight sank and settled over all.

He left his name, a murmur in the East,
That dies to silence amid older creeds,
With which he strove in vain: the fiery priest
Of faiths less fitted to their ruder needs:
As some lone pilgrim, with his staff and beads,
Mid forest-brutes whom ignorance makes tame,
He dwelt, and sowed an Eastern Church's seeds
He reigned, a teacher and a priest of fame:
He died and dying left a murmur and a name.

He died: and she, the Church that bade him go,
Yon dim Enchantress with her mystic claim,
Has ringed his forehead with her aureole-glow,
And monkish myths, and all the whispered fame
Of miracle, has clung about his name:
So Rome has said: but we, what answer we
Who in grim Indian gods and rites of shame
O'er all the East the teacher's failure see,
His Eastern Church a dream, his toil a vanity.

This then we say: as Time's dark face at last
Moveth its lips of thunder to decree
The doom that grew through all the murmuring past
To be the canon of the times to be:
No child of truth or priest of progress he,
Yet not the less a hero of his wars
Striving to quench the light he could not see,
And God, who knoweth all that makes and mars,
Judges his soul unseen which throbs among the stars.

God only knows, man failing in his choice,
How far apparent failure may succeed,
God only knows what echo of His voice
Lives in the cant of many a fallen creed,
God only gives the labourer his meed
For all the lingering influence widely spread,
Broad branching into many a word and deed
When dim oblivion veils the fountain-head;
So lives and lingers on the spirit of the dead.

This then we say: let all things further rest
And this brave life, with many thousands more,
Be gathered up in the eternal's breast
In that dim past his Love is bending o'er:
Healing all shattered hopes and failure sore:
Since he had bravely looked on death and pain
For what he chose to worship and adore,
Cast boldly down his life for loss or gain
In the eternal lottery: not to be in vain.

P.S. This poem was, as a good many of the others were, found here.

Poetry Thursday

I know I've posted this before.. but hey, it's a cool one. Voila Gloria in Profundis...

There has fallen on earth for a token
A god too great for the sky.
He has burst out of all things and broken
The bounds of eternity:
Into time and the terminal land
He has strayed like a thief or a lover,
For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is split on the sand.

Who is proud when the heavens are humble,
Who mounts if the mountains fall,
If the fixed stars topple and tumble
And a deluge of love drowns all-
Who rears up his head for a crown,
Who holds up his will for a warrant,
Who strives with the starry torrent,
When all that is good goes down?

For in dread of such falling and failing
The fallen angels fell
Inverted in insolence, scaling
The hanging mountain of hell:
But unmeasured of plummet and rod
Too deep for their sight to scan,
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.

Glory to God in the Lowest
The spout of the stars in spate-
Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest
And the lightning fears to be late:
As men dive for sunken gem
Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,
The fallen star has found it
In the cavern of Bethlehem.

Poetry Thursday

Okay Algernon, you got more then you bargained for. Namely, poetry and the solution to our earlier dilemna*. (Sorry to bump your post off Lewis (that looks really cool btw... I really couldn't forgive myself if I didn't post poetry, when I actually had remembered).

Okay, Days of the Week:
"Gogol, or Tuesday, had his simplicity well symbolised by a dress designed upon the division of the waters , a dress that seperated upon his forehead and fell to his feet, grey and silver, like a sheet of rain."

"The Professor, whose day was that on which the birds and fishes- the ruder forms of life- were created, had a dress of dim purple, over which sprawled goggle-eyed fishes and outrageous tropical birds, the union in him of unfathomable fancy and of doubt."

*For anyone who was wondering... in the process of discussing the seven days, Algernon and I simply could not remember what was the Professor's costume for the final whatchamacallit. So I looked it up, in case anyone was wondering(:

Alright, that digressions over, now to poetry.

Michael, Michael: Michael of the Morning,
Michael of the Army of the Lord,
Stiffen thou the hand upon the still sword, Michael,
Folded and shut upon the sheathed sword, Michael,
Under the fullness of the white robes falling,
Gird us with the secret of the sword.

When the world cracked because of a sneer in heaven,
Leaving out for all time a scar upon the sky,
Thou didst rise up against the Horror in the highest,
Dragging down the highest that looked down on the Most High:
Rending from the seventh heaven the hell of exaltation
Down the seven heavens till the dark seas burn:
Thou that in thunder threwest down the Dragon
Knowest in what silence the Serpent can return.

Down through the universe the vast night falling
(Michael, Michael: Michael of the Morning!)
Far down the universe the deep calms calling
(Michael, Michael: Michael of the Sword!)
Bid us not forget in the baths of all forgetfulness,
In the sigh long drawn from the frenzy and the fretfulness
In the huge holy sempiternal silence
In the beginning was the Word.

When from the deeps of dying God astounded
Angels and devils who do all but die
Seeing Him fallen where thou couldst not follow,
Seeing Him mounted where thou couldst not fly,
Hand on the hilt, thou hast halted all thy legions
Waiting the Tetelestai and the acclaim,
Swords that salute Him dead and everlasting
God beyond God and greater than His Name.

Round us and over us the cold thoughts creeping
(Michael, Michael: Michael of the battle-cry!)
Round us and under us the thronged world sleeping
(Michael, Michael: Michael of the Charge!)
Guard us the Word; the trysting and the trusting
Edge upon the honour and the blade unrusting
Fine as the hair and tauter than the harpstring
Ready as when it rang upon the targe.

He that giveth peace unto us; not as the world giveth:
He that giveth law unto us; not as the scribes:
Shall he be softened for the softening of the cities
Patient in usury; delicate in bribes?
They that come to quiet us, saying the sword is broken,
Break man with famine, fetter them with gold,
Sell them as sheep; and He shall know the selling
For He was more than murdered. He was sold.

Michael, Michael: Michael of the Mustering,
Michael of the marching on the mountains of the Lord,
Marshal the world and purge of rot and riot
Rule through the world till all the world be quiet:
Only establish when the world is broken
What is unbroken is the word.

Poetry Thursday- 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,
From 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.

An accompanyment for it can be found here.

Poetry Thursday- The Christmas Truce

On Christmas Eve 1914, in the middle of WWI, in numerous places along the trenches, an unusual thing happened. Men stopped fighting. They sang, held broken conversations in various languages, played soccer, had Mass together... it must have been incredible. There is a movie, by name Joyeux Noel, which tells the story of one of the truces, and here you can see a six minute video on this topic, which you really should watch.

Alright, that was not a completely random tangent, although it may have sounded like one, for Chesterton wrote a poem about the truce, and so the above badly-written paragraph was my weak attempt to give you some background.

The Truce of Christmas
By G.K. Chesterton

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 hold 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.)

Poetry Thursday

It's J.R.R. Tolkiens birthday today!!!!! And I'm sure Gilbert would approve a brief breaking of the conventions here to post a Tolkien poem.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

Poetry- The House of Christmas

I know, I know I forgot again... but at least I'm remembering now(:

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings

Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.