{"id":1959,"date":"2010-12-14T03:34:31","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T08:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chesterton.org\/?page_id=1785"},"modified":"2018-11-19T23:54:40","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:54:40","slug":"lecture-51","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chesterton.org\/store\/lecture-51\/","title":{"rendered":"Lecture 51: The Collected Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

When his\u00a0Collected Poems<\/em> appeared in 1927, G.K. Chesterton had been recognized as a major English poet for well over a decade. Most of the poems in this collection had already been published in book form, including the charmers such as \u201cThe Donkey,\u201d the rousers such as \u201cLepanto,\u201d and the epic\u00a0Ballad of the White Horse<\/em>. However, the poems in Book One of this volume, gleaned from the\u00a0New Witness<\/em> and\u00a0G.K.’s Weekly<\/em>, appear between the covers of a book for the first time.<\/p>\n

Since they were originally written for papers that were mostly political, these are mostly political poems, which means they are critical of political affairs. But they are poems written by a patriot, for as Chesterton says, the true patriot is always a little sad. He loves his land, which is why he wishes it were better. He loves his land, which is why he bemoans the state it is in. All of the things he hears praised as progress he sees really as causing ruin: industrialization, commercialization, and globalization. \u201cThe thriftless towns litter with lives undone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Industrialization has not only spoiled the landscape (\u201cSmoke rolls in stinking, suffocating wrack \/ On Shakespeare’s land, turning the green one black.\u201d), the attendant commercialization has spoiled simple things like the pleasure of reading a book because now \u201cthe back of the cover will tell you the plot.\u201d<\/p>\n

His attacks on globalization range from the almost turgid \u201cThe Judgment of England\u201d (\u201cWhere Wealth accumulates and Men decay.\u201d) to the ironic \u201cThe World State\u201d:<\/p>\n

Oh, how I love Humanity,
\nWith love so pure and pringlish,
\nAnd how I hate the horrid French.
\nWho never will be English! The International Idea,
\nThe largest and the clearest,
\nIs welding all the nations now,
\nExcept the one that’s nearest.
\nThis compromise has long been known,
\nThis scheme of partial pardons,
\nIn ethical societies
\nAnd small suburban gardens –
\nThe villas and the chapels where
\nI learned with little labour
\nThe way to love my fellow-man
\nAnd hate my next-door neighbour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And perhaps his best dig comes when he asks:<\/p>\n

Might not Americanisation
\nBe best applied to its own nation?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even the religious poems are political, being a commentary on the current state of the Church of England, as epitomized by one short poem with a long title: \u201cA Broad Minded Bishop Rebukes The Verminous St. Francis.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Brother Francis pardoned Brother Flea,
\nThere still seems need of such strange charity,
\nSeeing he is, for all his gay goodwill,
\nBitten by funny little creatures still.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are some non-political poems in this collection. The most literary ones are actually parodies of other poets. It is in playing with poetic forms that Chesterton displays his mastery of them. His \u201cVariations on an Air\u201d is a hilarious tour de force, rewriting the nursery rhyme \u201cOld King Cole\u201d in the styles of Tennyson, Yeats, Browning, Whitman, and Swinburne. But he unleashes some fury when he writes \u201cAnswers to the Poets,\u201d attacking the modern poets for both their form and their content. In the bitingly brilliant \u201cTo a Modern Poet,\u201d he lays waste the wasteland of free verse. In \u201cThe Fat Lady Answers\u201d he goes after such snobs as Frances Cornford \u2013 the immortal Frances Cornford – who sneers at \u201cthe fat white woman whom nobody loves.\u201d Chesterton gives the large lady a chance to answer back:<\/p>\n

Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
\nFat-head poet that nobody reads?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This volume was the most complete collection of Chesterton\u2019s poetry published during his lifetime. It was very well-received. It went through several more editions with changes and additions and deletions, but it was far from complete both in terms of the poetry he had previously published and the poetry that he had written that had not been published. It did not include his very first collection,\u00a0Greybeards at Play<\/em>, nor his most recent,\u00a0The Queen of Seven Swords<\/em>. He would go on to publish a few limited edition single poems, such as\u00a0Gloria de Profundis<\/em> and\u00a0The Grave of Arthur<\/em>, but the poems that he left unpublished would be enough to fill two more large volumes. Most of these have seen the light of print for the first time with the completion of the collected poetry by Ignatius Press.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Political Poems Written by a Patriot<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[1122,242],"class_list":["post-1959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chesterton-101","tag-poems","tag-poetry"],"yoast_head":"\nLecture 51-The Collected Poems<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When his\u00a0Collected Poems appeared in 1927, G.K. 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