The Song of the Strange Ascetic

As I've mentioned before here (but does anybody ever listen?), I'm not a huge fan of Chesterton the poet, though I think he wrote some sublime verses. I don't think he was fussy enough to be a consistently fine poet.

However, he wrote several poems worth returning to, and this is one of them. The last couplet has become almost proverbial.

The Song of the Strange Ascetic

f I had been a Heathen,
I’d have praised the purple vine,
My slaves should dig the vineyards,
And I would drink the wine.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And his slaves grow lean and grey,
That he may drink some tepid milk
Exactly twice a day.

If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have crowned Neaera’s curls,
And filled my life with love affairs,
My house with dancing girls;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And to lecture rooms is forced,
Where his aunts, who are not married,
Demand to be divorced.

If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have sent my armies forth,
And dragged behind my chariots
The Chieftains of the North.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And he drives the dreary quill,
To lend the poor that funny cash
That makes them poorer still.

If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have piled my pyre on high,
And in a great red whirlwind
Gone roaring to the sky;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And a richer man than I:
And they put him in an oven,
Just as if he were a pie.

Now who that runs can read it,
The riddle that I write,
Of why this poor old sinner,
Should sin without delight-
But I, I cannot read it
(Although I run and run),
Of them that do not have the faith,
And will not have the fun.

Peter Hitchens Quotes Father Brown...

...on his blog (which, with delicious stuffiness, he insists on calling a "weblog"):

The interesting reverse of the [atheist] bus slogan ["There's Probably No God, Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life"], the Christian understanding that actions matter in a way we can't readily observe or understand if we reject the eternal, is hauntingly expressed in this passage from a 'Father Brown' story 'The Sins of Prince Saradine'.


"Do you believe in doom?" asked the restless Prince Saradine suddenly.

"No", answered his guest. "I believe in Doomsday."

The prince turned from the window and stared at him in a singular manner, his face in shadow against the sunset. "What do you mean?"he asked.

"I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry," answered Father Brown. "The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person."

I particularly like that phrase 'the wrong side of the tapestry', as it is such a good metaphor for the way humans so often completely misunderstand the circumstances in which they find themselves. And the idea that our actions 'mean something somewhere else' sends a shiver down my spine whenever I think about it, as well it might.

Read the whole post here.

Peter Hitchens is an interesting character. I read his recent book, The Rage Against God, several times. As a memoir of English society and attitudes to religion, it's marvellous. As an argument against atheism, it leaves something to desired (especially Hitchen's oft-repeated claim that there is no decisive proof or disproof of God's existence; something a Catholic could not affirm.) He also quotes Chesterton's poem, The Silent People, in his equally readable The Abolition of Britain.

Hitchens is pretty much a lone voice in England now in his full-blooded traditionalism. (Even Roger Scruton's conservatism is rather qualified, agnostic and fatalistic, very far from Chesterton and Belloc's rousing and fighting creed.) But Chesterton would clash with him in his defence of Prohibition.

Why Idealists Win

"This is the blunder of the cynics when they say that idealists do not succeed. Idealists, consistent idealists, succeed much better than anyone else, because no man can be at ease in the presence of his own neglected ideal. Men are always fidgetting and shifting a little nearer to the high seat where the fanatic sits. When once a man has been called an impracticable visionary, he is practically bound to be a success. The moment a thing has been called impossible, something sporting in the soul of man takes the bet and resolves to bring the thing about."

The Right Way to Denounce Things, June 1912, Illustrated London News

I don't know whether it's quite true that "when a man has been called an impracticable visionary, he is practically bound to be a success"; but I do believe there is something inside all of us that admires the fanatic. Secularists may decry faith as being irrational; but the human soul craves faith. We thrill to stories of pioneers who had such faith in a single idea-- whether it was a new design of toaster or a new form of government-- that they persevered in the face of opposition and ridicule. The climax of our films and stories so often involve one character showing unbreakable faith in another. Liberals retain their faith in democracy and education when it seems like dictatorship and ignorance (as they see it) is in the ascendant, and traditionalists hold to their faith in the "abiding things" when the world seems to be nothing but flux.

It was the madness of 1916 that won Irish independence where all the fillibustering and power politics of the preceding decades had failed. The national legend of the British people is the "finest hour" of 1940, when continued resistance against Hitler seemed futile.

Personally, I don't know whether man-made climate change is a reality or not, but I do sometimes wonder if recycling and energy-saving appeals to the younger generation because they are bored with affluence and cry out for some kind of austerity.

It also makes me wonder if we are going to see more and more Westerners, brought up in a culture where self-gratification is the highest good, drawn to Islam for its promise of a more challenging and purposeful life.

A Little Bit of Self-Promotion

Never hurt anybody, did it?

I am momentarily taking off my GK Chesterton Society of Ireland hat and putting on my "not terribly informed Catholic" hat to plug my new other blog, Practicing to be Catholic. Ill-informed ramblings on the sacred tradition I am doing my best to understand, and the state of Catholicism in Ireland.

So many Catholic blogs are so theologically, politically, economically, culturally and gastronomically literate, I thought it was time for something different...

If You Type "GKC Online" into Google...

...you get directed to the homepage of the Greenwich Kitchen Centre, Virginia.

I had to laugh at this, and I don't think Chesterton would be too displeased. He was a big fan of the family kitchen:

A correspondent has written me an able and interesting letter in the matter of some allusions of mine to the subject of communal kitchens. He defends communal kitchens very lucidly from the standpoint of the calculating collectivist; but, like many of his school, he cannot apparently grasp that there is another test of the whole matter, with which such calculation has nothing at all to do. He knows it would be cheaper if a number of us ate at the same time, so as to use the same table. So it would. It would also be cheaper if a number of us slept at different times, so as to use the same pair of trousers. But the question is not how cheap are we buying a thing, but what are we buying? It is cheap to own a slave. And it is cheaper still to be a slave.

My correspondent also says that the habit of dining out in restaurants, etc., is growing. So, I believe, is the habit of committing suicide. I do not desire to connect the two facts together. It seems fairly clear that a man could not dine at a restaurant because he had just committed suicide; and it would be extreme, perhaps, to suggest that he commits suicide because he has just dined at a restaurant. But the two cases, when put side by side, are enough to indicate the falsity and poltroonery of this eternal modern argument from what is in fashion. The question for brave men is not whether a certain thing is increasing; the question is whether we are increasing it. I dine very often in restaurants because the nature of my trade makes it convenient: but if I thought that by dining in restaurants I was working for the creation of communal meals, I would never enter a restaurant again; I would carry bread and cheese in my pocket or eat chocolate out of automatic machines. For the personal element in some things is sacred. I heard Mr. Will Crooks put it perfectly the other day: "The most sacred thing is to be able to shut your own door."