Poem: A Ballade of Suicide

The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours on the wall
Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"
The strangest whim has seized me. . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay
My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall
I see a little cloud all pink and grey
Perhaps the rector's mother will NOT call
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way
I never read the works of Juvenal
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

The world will have another washing-day;
The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;
Rationalists are growing rational
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray,
So secret that the very sky seems small
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

ENVOI

Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
Even to-day your royal head may fall
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

~G.K. Chesterton

GK's wit

Chesterton's humorous responses to various questions:

• “Would you prefer to be thin?”
“No. My weight gives us a subject with which to start these questions and answer sessions.”

• “What are your thoughts on Hell?”
“I regard it as a thing to be avoided.”

• “What do you think of the German language?”
“I regard it with a profound agnosticism.”

• “If you were stranded on a desert island with only one book, what book would you want it to be?”
“Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding."

• “Could you speak louder please?”
“Good sister, don’t worry. You aren’t missing a thing!”

• “What do you think will happen in the next great revolution: the revolt of Nature against Man?”
“I hope Man will not hesitate to shoot.”

• “Do you believe in the comradeship between the sexes?”
“Madam, if I were to treat you for two minutes like a comrade, you would turn me out of the house.”

• “You seem to know everything.”
“I know nothing, Madam. I am a journalist.”

• “In the event of your having to change your original position, what tactic do you adopt?”
“On such occasions, I invariably commit suicide.”

~Quotes taken from Common Sense 101: Lessons From G.K. Chesterton, by Dale Ahlquist.

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"If he will produce sublime architecture"

“SUPPOSE a man says: “Why am I not free to produce a sublime architectural effect with thirty-seven butter-tubs, three gas pipes, and a packing case? Why should I not make beauty out of these?” There seems to be no answer except to say, “Why not, indeed?” If he will produce sublime architecture out of them, I shall not complain of the sublimity. If he will make beauty from them, I shall not condemn them for contriving to be beautiful…. My attitude toward the experiment may be described as one of patient expectancy—of hope not unmingled with doubt. I am waiting for the moment when the pagoda of tubs shall strike my soul like a thunderbolt out of the sky; when I shall stagger with admiration at some perfect poise and balance of pipes and packing-cases which I had never foreseen even in my dreams. I say nothing of that inspiring moment of my life, except that it has not yet come.”

~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, 2/11/22.

 

 

"Vision of worthlessness"

“TOUCHING this matter of time, there does seem to be a rather peculiar quality about modern painters. I have never understood why painters are so much more terrified than poets or prose writers of the notion of being behind the times. It seems probable, at present, that they will really find themselves behind the times. They will find themselves the last people left alive, to believe in this silly nineteenth century notion of being in advance of the times. All the thinkers who really think, and all the theorists whose theories seriously count, are growing more and more skeptical about the very existence of progress, and certainly about the desirability of this sort of self-swallowing and suicidal kind of progress. The notion that every generation proves worthless the last generation, and is in its turn proved worthless by the next generation, is an everlasting vista and vision of worthlessness which is fortunately itself worthless.”

~G.K. Chesterton: Are the Artists Going Mad?

 

 

"The infernal workshop"

‘A crime,’ he said slowly, ‘is like any other work of art. Don’t look surprised; crimes are by no means the only works of art that come from the infernal workshop. But every work of art, divine or diabolic, has one indispensable mark – I mean, that the centre of it is simple, however much the fulfilment may be complicated...'

~G.K. Chesterton: The Innocence of Father Brown, III. The Queer Feet.

"The great paradox"

“IT IS the great paradox of the modern world, the fact that at the very time when the world decided that people should not be coerced about their form of religion, it also decided that they should be coerced about their form of education…. It is obviously unfair and unreasonable that secular education should forbid one man to say a religion is true and allow another man to say it is untrue. It is obviously essential to justice that unsectarian education should cut both ways; and that if the orthodox must cut out the statement that man has a divine origin, the materialist must cut out the statement that he has a wholly and exclusively bestial origin.”

~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, 8/8/25.

"Happiness is..."

“HAPPINESS is a state of the soul; a state in which our natures are full of the wine of an ancient youth, in which banquets last for ever, and roads lead everywhere, where all things are under the exuberant leadership of faith, hope, and charity.”

~G.K. Chesterton: Charles Dickens.