Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Poems
    Poems
    Poems
    Ebook127 pages1 hour

    Poems

    By G. K. Chesterton

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    "Poems" by G. K. Chesterton
    Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". This book contains his poems which have been divided into the following sections: dedications, war poems, love poems, religious poems, rhymes for the times, miscellaneous poems, and ballades. His work is often overlooked but is much beloved by poetry readers around the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGood Press
    Release dateNov 22, 2019
    ISBN4057664638588
    Author

    G. K. Chesterton

    G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was a prolific English journalist and author best known for his mystery series featuring the priest-detective Father Brown and for the metaphysical thriller The Man Who Was Thursday. Baptized into the Church of England, Chesterton underwent a crisis of faith as a young man and became fascinated with the occult. He eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and published some of Christianity’s most influential apologetics, including Heretics and Orthodoxy. 

    Read more from G. K. Chesterton

    Related to Poems

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Tessa Castro

      Jul 26, 2023

      IN COMPETITION No 295 you were invited to write a poem called Roots. Cherry MacGregor started off in medias res: ‘Has the vine died? My husband had asked,/ As we enjoyed lunch in the garden.’ Another excellent opening came from DM Davis: ‘Roots, oh m

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      RHYME & REASON

      May 17, 2021

      RHYME & REASON
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Until The Sea Closed Over Us And The Light Was Gone

      Jul 1, 2020

      —Dante, Canto XXVI But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning—El Paso Although it was really last summer’s song,all this summer Despacito played on as slower then I turned myself to gazeupon Juarez. The summer everything hurts my eyes, a dozen

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      From: “Gravity Archives”

      Sep 3, 2024

      1. Jetlagged visitor in London dark awry with first light catastrophic: tender welts and bruises, smears of iodine, bare bones scraped fleshless, fallen anyhow. What disaster fell and welters out of sight? But day distracts. Cold tube train wheels sq

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tessa Castro

      Mar 9, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 277 you were invited to write a poem called Morning Sounds. The entries were vivid: half domestic, half outdoor. Tim Lloyd observed that ‘A bin lorry approaching in reverse/Sounds like an asthmatic seal.’ Liz Piper remembered, durin

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      TEN POEMS Translations of Rafael Alberti

      May 1, 2024

      Throughout the centuries,through the nothingness of the world,I, without sleep, search for you. Behind me, imperceptible,without touching my shoulders,my dead angel keeps watch. Where is Paradise,Shadow, you who have been there?I ask silently. Cities

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Four Poems

      Sep 4, 2018

      In London. England. Who knows why?Perhaps this rumpled guyFrom central casting or a page of Dickens.He’s taking ordinary usTo haunts of the illustrious,Where even dull pulse quickens. A red felt hat’s dark fingered brim,Food-spotted vest are—him.A mo

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tessa Castro

      Aug 21, 2024

      IN COMPETITION No 309 you were invited to write a poem called An Ill Wind. I was surprised by the popularity of breaking wind among the entries. And I don’t know whether the wind blew some competitors’ verse into lines of unmanageable length. Even so

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tessa Castro

      Aug 21, 2024

      IN COMPETITION No 309 you were invited to write a poem called An Ill Wind. I was surprised by the popularity of breaking wind among the entries. And I don’t know whether the wind blew some competitors’ verse into lines of unmanageable length. Even so

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mountain Time

      Jan 1, 2021

      In the air you don’t know who you are or where My own self feels it is in wind being born These are currents a man made one eighth of smokeless fire fears but chooses A path south from Anchorage to a Mountain House Ungovern the northern land to pass

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      from The Odyssey, Book Five

      Jun 18, 2024

      Hermes strapped the beautiful sandals onto his feet,Immortal, made of gold, which bore him across the wet seasAnd endless expanses of land as swift as the breath of the wind.He took along the wand with which he lulls to sleep the eyesOf any man he pl

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In Memory Of Derek Alton Walcott

      Mar 15, 2018

      1 Island traffic slows to a haltas screeching gulls reluctantto lift heavenwardcongregate like mourners in saltcrustedkelp, as the repellentnews spreads to colder shores: Sir Derek is no more.Bandwidths, clogged by streamingtributes, carry the pitcho

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Competition

      Aug 25, 2021

      IN COMPETITION No 270, you were invited to write a poem called The Hall. Heather Oxley began, ‘Our halls are gateways to our outside selves.’ John Oldershaw’s narrator started in medias res: ‘“It’s the hall that sells the house!”/ Said Mr Valentine,

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend

      Jun 17, 2020

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tessa Castro

      May 4, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 279 you were invited to write a poem called Broken Bottle. Basil Ransome-Davies portrayed himself as ‘The man who dropped his wine in Marks’, by Bateman. Mike Morrison’s narrator found that the wind had knocked from the shelf ‘A nov

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Call Of The Desert

      Jan 3, 2023

      T.E. Lawrence was taken by his guides to a ruin in the desert of North Syria. The Arabs believed that it had been built by a prince for his queen and that its clay had been kneaded with the essential oils of flowers. As Lawrence wrote in Seven Pillar

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Portrait Of An Island

      Jun 3, 2021

      AN ISLAND provides refuge for refugees. Their roofs, tablecloths, and bedsheets wave from the port’s breeze. Temporarily permanent, adjacent to the water, each tent kneels behind the mayor’s office and in front of a tenth-century castle. The locals p

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Four Poems

      May 1, 2022

      —after Gerrit van Honthorst’s “Samson and Delilah,” c. 1621 They’ve made a monster of me, marring my namefor eternity. I’m not Delilah,but Laila. I loved him. Each night, in bed, after our bodies became one body, he would succumb to sleep, resting hi

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      One Night

      Sep 15, 2022

      The night looks wrapped in milky cotton. The full moon shines through from time to time when the fogbanks turn wispy under the stratus. The entire sea glows with greenish, phosphorescent sheets. It is hardly rumbling, because the fog muffles all soun

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Something About John Coltrane

      Sep 1, 2021

      Something about a tree in shallow sleepListening for what it wants to remember: The note of a seed, its neck sliding throughDirt and its confusion—nothing cleansed Of struggle. The weight lost after death,A confrontation of death. John Coltrane Even

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Carningli

      Mar 22, 2024

      Carningli
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Call Of The Wild

      Nov 30, 2020

      The Call Of The Wild
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Toby Martinez De Las Rivas

      Dec 15, 2018

      III. Is belief, like love, first a touch, a feeling,an inclination toward rightness?But I have known—known—myself right somany times & been so, só wrong.Is it a mode of dying? Of benediction?Acceptance of suffering?It is benediction.I am ill. There i

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2024

      after a cycle of paintings by the Meister des Marienlebens, Munich What begins: everything. Size of a crumb,indiscriminate bundle of cells. It’sa barnacle with a dream inside. Cloudin-sewn with seed pearls. Radiant shapethat in theory she’s always ca

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2021

      The light from the full moon lent a silky, glacial sheen to the towering front of the cloud, which stretched off to the horizon in both directions. I stood transfixed as it made its way down the street toward me at a little over the town’s speed limi

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tessa Castro

      May 1, 2024

      IN COMPETITION No 305 you were invited to write a poem called Dawn Chorus. I liked Charles Owen’s description of the cock or rooster as ‘Hot hacksaw-headed, braggart-breasted,/ Liveried in flame’. Wally Smith was right to call ‘A jay’s call like a bl

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Poems

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Poems - G. K. Chesterton

      G. K. Chesterton

      Poems

      Published by Good Press, 2019

      [email protected]

      EAN 4057664638588

      Table of Contents

      I

      II

      WAR POEMS

      III

      LOVE POEMS

      IV

      RELIGIOUS POEMS

      V

      RHYMES FOR THE TIMES

      VI

      MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

      VII

      BALLADES

      I

      Table of Contents

      THREE DEDICATIONS

      Table of Contents

      TO EDMUND CLERIHEW BENTLEY

      THE DEDICATION OF THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY

      A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,

      Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.

      Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;

      The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay.

      Round us in antic order their crippled vices came—

      Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.

      Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,

      Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.

      Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;

      The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.

      They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:

      Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.

      Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus;

      When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us.

      Children we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as we,

      High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.

      Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd,

      When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard.

      Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled;

      Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world.

      I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings

      Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things;

      And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass,

      Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass;

      Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain

      Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain.

      Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey,

      Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day,

      But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms,

      God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:

      We have seen the city of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved—Blessed

      are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.

      This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,

      And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells—

      Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,

      Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.

      The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand—

      Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?

      The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,

      And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the brain.

      Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;

      Yea, there is strength in striking root, and good in growing old.

      We have found common things at last, and marriage and a creed.

      And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.

      TO HILAIRE BELLOC

      THE DEDICATION OF THE NAPOLEON 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 it is 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;

      The legend of an epic hour

      A

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1