'I love to see the little stars
All dancing to one tune;
I think quite highly of the Sun,
And kindly of the Moon.'
Coming to earth, this same philosopher is full of friendly relations with America, for—
'The great Niagara waterfall
Is never shy with me.'
In the same volume Chesterton writes of the spread of æstheticism, and that the cult of the Soul had a terrible effect on trade:
'The Shopmen, when their souls were still,
Declined to open shops—
And Cooks recorded frames of mind
In sad and subtle chops.'
In a small volume of poems called 'Wine, Water, and Song,' we have some of the poems that appear in Chesterton's novels. They have a delightful air of brilliancy and satire, about dogs and grocers and that peculiar king of the Jews, Nebuchadnezzar, who, when he is spoken of by scholars, alters his name to Nebuchadrezzar. We have but room for one quotation, and the place of honour must be given to the epic of the grocer who, like many of other trades, makes a fortune by giving short weights:
'The Hell-Instructed Grocer
Has a Temple made of Tin,
And the Ruin of good innkeepers
Is loudly urged therein;
But now the sands are running out
From sugar of a sort,
The Grocer trembles, for his time,
Just like his weight, is short.'
The hymn that Mr. Chesterton has written, called 'O God of Earth and Altar,' is unfortunately so good and so entirely sensible that the clergy on the whole have not used it much; rather they prefer to sing of heaven with a golden floor and a gate of pearl, ignoring a really fine hymn that pictures God as a sensible Being and not a Lord Chief Justice either of sickly sentimentality or of the type of a Judge Jeffreys.
It must be said that to many people who know Chesterton he is first and foremost an essayist and lastly a poet. The reason is that he has written comparatively little serious poetry; this is, I think, rather a pity—not that quantity is always consistent with quality, but that in some way it may not be too much to say that Chesterton is the best poet of the day; and I do not forget that he has as contemporaries Alfred Noyes and Walter de la Mare.