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The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume 10: Collected Poetry, Part I
The is the second volume of Chesterton's novels in this series of his Collected Works. (Volume VI is the other book of novels.) Besides his well-known philosophical-theological writings, Chesterton's fiction is very popular (Father Brown Mysteries, The Man Who Was Thursday, etc.) and among those who regarded him as a great literary figure are T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis and W.H. Auden. The reader will encounter characters in these novels that defend with great vigor the dignity of the person and fundamental Christian beliefs.
608 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1994
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About the author
G.K. Chesterton
4,653 books5,783 followersGilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 21, 2008
I absolutely loved this collected volume of Gilbert Keith Chesterton's stunning poetry. I had already had the pleasure of reading "The Ballad of the White Horse", but many of the shorter pieces were new to me and I would highly recommend that any Chestertonion read this book, and then add it to their collection as I am sure you will want to read it again and again...
May 14, 2023
The poems cover a wide variety of themes, but almost all of them in some ways connect back to Christianity. He also employs a healthy dose of sarcasm, irony, and humor. A theme that runs implicitly through a lot of the poems is the traditional Christian dichotomy between the things of this world and the higher virtues of the spiritual world.
“The Wise Men” shows how wisdom often over complicate things and far from discovering truth ends up losing the way.
“The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.
Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise mert of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.”
The wisemen can have all sort of technical and Greeks name for things of the world, but without Christ and the Christian faith they are ignorant and lack truth. These wisemen are reduced to being like little children at the end of the poem “walking through rain and snow.”
“The House of Christmas” is a retelling of the nativity, which presents the birth and birthplace of Jesus as the new home for all people, welcoming and a salvation for everyone.
“A Song of Gifts to God” reveals how the gifts the wisemen and others offer God can never match the gifts God gave to us.
“Blessed are the Peacemakers” takes its title from Matthew 5:9. It is an ironic poem that deals with the scorn the speaker feels for blind nationalism.
“But in a new clean light of scorn
Close up my quarrel with my sires;
Who bring my English heart to me,
Who mend me like a broken toy;
Till I can see you fight and flee,
And laugh as if I were a boy.”
The idea of that “scorn” is “a new clean light” provides an unexpected image since we tend to think of scorn as clouding judgements. Through his scorn for nationalism and militaristic pride for his nation he sarcastically hopes it will end his “quarrel” with his “sires,” which both represents the political leaders of the country and his actual ancestors. As part of this sarcasm, he hopes to finally receive his “English heart” as if he were a broken toy being fixed. This is another sly biblical allusion to Matthew 18:3. Toys are not only associated with being childlike, but implies that those who blindly embraced nationalism are mere disposable toys to their rulers, playthings. Such a change would turn him childlike and laugh at violence and destruction as something amusing. As the poem implies this is a perversion of the Gospel of Matthew. We are supposed to become childlike in humility and innocence, not become naive pawns of nationalistic sentiments.
“The Wife of Flanders” is poem in form of many rhetorical questions surrounding the destruction of a small village on the way to conquest of Paris as part of a larger war. It captures the value of life of even the smallest person compared to military glories and conquests and the loss of honor soldiers incur who kill innocent civilians and destroy their property.
Chesterton tackles love too. “Love’s Trappist” compares the isolation a lover experiences under the spell of love to being like a Trappist monk contemplating God with all his thoughts and feelings.
“Lo: I too join the brotherhood of silence,
I am Love's Trappist and you ask in vain,
For man through Love's gate, even as through Death's gate,
Goeth alone and comes not back again.”
Love is a solitary experience, which cannot be explained to someone who has never experienced it.
“Prophets and sages, questioners and doubters,
O world, old world, the best hath ne'er been told!”
Despite all the prophets (and poets) who have existed in the world, even they have failed to fully capture the true essence or experience of love.
“Confessional” present a knight confessing the pains and heavy burdens of his life despite “his creed” stemming from his love for some unseen queen that he has loved in secret.
“The Deluge” is a short poetic retelling of Noah’s flood from the perspective of a “nameless, tattered, broken man” about be to killed in the flood who decides to drink in honor of God, but the coming deluge also seems to be symbolic for the speaker’s lust for a woman he meets. The ending also seems to be a play on Tennyson’s “drinking life to the lees” where Odysseus desires to leave home to go on more journeys and experience more adventures and what life has to offer.
“Not undone were the heaven and earth,
This hollow world thrown up,
Before one man had stood up straight! And drained it like a cup.”
The speaker here celebrates his impending destruction now that he has experienced life, lust, and attempted to drink it to its fullest.
Chesterton has a lot of wonderful poems in the form of a ballade, especially good were “a ballade of a suicide” about a man who decides to keep putting off his suicide because he keeps remembering things he wants to do tomorrow and “a ballade of book-reviewer” which defends the importance of reading good books and “feed[ing] my brain with better things.”
“The Wise Men” shows how wisdom often over complicate things and far from discovering truth ends up losing the way.
“The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.
Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise mert of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.”
The wisemen can have all sort of technical and Greeks name for things of the world, but without Christ and the Christian faith they are ignorant and lack truth. These wisemen are reduced to being like little children at the end of the poem “walking through rain and snow.”
“The House of Christmas” is a retelling of the nativity, which presents the birth and birthplace of Jesus as the new home for all people, welcoming and a salvation for everyone.
“A Song of Gifts to God” reveals how the gifts the wisemen and others offer God can never match the gifts God gave to us.
“Blessed are the Peacemakers” takes its title from Matthew 5:9. It is an ironic poem that deals with the scorn the speaker feels for blind nationalism.
“But in a new clean light of scorn
Close up my quarrel with my sires;
Who bring my English heart to me,
Who mend me like a broken toy;
Till I can see you fight and flee,
And laugh as if I were a boy.”
The idea of that “scorn” is “a new clean light” provides an unexpected image since we tend to think of scorn as clouding judgements. Through his scorn for nationalism and militaristic pride for his nation he sarcastically hopes it will end his “quarrel” with his “sires,” which both represents the political leaders of the country and his actual ancestors. As part of this sarcasm, he hopes to finally receive his “English heart” as if he were a broken toy being fixed. This is another sly biblical allusion to Matthew 18:3. Toys are not only associated with being childlike, but implies that those who blindly embraced nationalism are mere disposable toys to their rulers, playthings. Such a change would turn him childlike and laugh at violence and destruction as something amusing. As the poem implies this is a perversion of the Gospel of Matthew. We are supposed to become childlike in humility and innocence, not become naive pawns of nationalistic sentiments.
“The Wife of Flanders” is poem in form of many rhetorical questions surrounding the destruction of a small village on the way to conquest of Paris as part of a larger war. It captures the value of life of even the smallest person compared to military glories and conquests and the loss of honor soldiers incur who kill innocent civilians and destroy their property.
Chesterton tackles love too. “Love’s Trappist” compares the isolation a lover experiences under the spell of love to being like a Trappist monk contemplating God with all his thoughts and feelings.
“Lo: I too join the brotherhood of silence,
I am Love's Trappist and you ask in vain,
For man through Love's gate, even as through Death's gate,
Goeth alone and comes not back again.”
Love is a solitary experience, which cannot be explained to someone who has never experienced it.
“Prophets and sages, questioners and doubters,
O world, old world, the best hath ne'er been told!”
Despite all the prophets (and poets) who have existed in the world, even they have failed to fully capture the true essence or experience of love.
“Confessional” present a knight confessing the pains and heavy burdens of his life despite “his creed” stemming from his love for some unseen queen that he has loved in secret.
“The Deluge” is a short poetic retelling of Noah’s flood from the perspective of a “nameless, tattered, broken man” about be to killed in the flood who decides to drink in honor of God, but the coming deluge also seems to be symbolic for the speaker’s lust for a woman he meets. The ending also seems to be a play on Tennyson’s “drinking life to the lees” where Odysseus desires to leave home to go on more journeys and experience more adventures and what life has to offer.
“Not undone were the heaven and earth,
This hollow world thrown up,
Before one man had stood up straight! And drained it like a cup.”
The speaker here celebrates his impending destruction now that he has experienced life, lust, and attempted to drink it to its fullest.
Chesterton has a lot of wonderful poems in the form of a ballade, especially good were “a ballade of a suicide” about a man who decides to keep putting off his suicide because he keeps remembering things he wants to do tomorrow and “a ballade of book-reviewer” which defends the importance of reading good books and “feed[ing] my brain with better things.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 20, 2018
Chesterton was a prolific poet, as he was prolific in practically all literary genres. The outstanding epic poem "The Ballad of the White Horse" is not to be missed.
December 7, 2016
Well, I've been putting off writing a review of this for some time. Why? Because Chesterton is so damn comprehensive on all matter of subject and style that I would have to be an academic of his work to truly give an appraisal or criticism worthy of his work. To start with I am mostly on the most part too tired to do this, but I shall try. This is the collected poems, and collected they are, 387 pages of the things. I read this cover to cover, without pausing to read another, possibly my downfall in having been so late to the mark on reviewing this.
Let me start at the beginning ... The Battle of the Stories ... brilliant, "So doubtful doctors punch and prod and prick, A man thought dead: and when there's not a kick Left in the corpse, no twitch or faint contraction, The doctors say: "See .... there is no reaction.". "Songs of Education", "The Strange Music, "A Ballade of an Anti-Puritan", "the Song Against Grocers" (Part of his "Songs of against" series), read them all - fantastic. Then book five, "Thou Shall Not Kill", "Cyclopean", "The Mirror of Madmen" ... I'm putting the book back on the shelf now.
It's not that it is heavy going, it is Chesterton after all, but it is full, and it is a feast. It is worth everybody reading. I don't select bits here and there. i read the lot. This took it out of me. I'm onto a lighter read now, but if you do read this, I suggest you read Chesterton from start to finish. I can't remember what i learned or can recall from the from the work but I think that is because it yearns for the reader to return. And so I shall, in good time.
Let me start at the beginning ... The Battle of the Stories ... brilliant, "So doubtful doctors punch and prod and prick, A man thought dead: and when there's not a kick Left in the corpse, no twitch or faint contraction, The doctors say: "See .... there is no reaction.". "Songs of Education", "The Strange Music, "A Ballade of an Anti-Puritan", "the Song Against Grocers" (Part of his "Songs of against" series), read them all - fantastic. Then book five, "Thou Shall Not Kill", "Cyclopean", "The Mirror of Madmen" ... I'm putting the book back on the shelf now.
It's not that it is heavy going, it is Chesterton after all, but it is full, and it is a feast. It is worth everybody reading. I don't select bits here and there. i read the lot. This took it out of me. I'm onto a lighter read now, but if you do read this, I suggest you read Chesterton from start to finish. I can't remember what i learned or can recall from the from the work but I think that is because it yearns for the reader to return. And so I shall, in good time.
January 28, 2009
Fantastic.
July 22, 2009
Great stuff. A wbole range of stuff, all of it good, some of it great, some of it fantastic.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews