Saturday, November 17, 2012

For a War Memorial

The following poem is one I found in a Book of Poems by G K Chesterton in Penny Banister's Bookstore
Two things.
This poem is amazing.
And you should go and visit Penny.

The poem:


For a War Memorial
(Suggested Inscription probably not selected by the Committee.)

The hucksters haggle in the mart
The cars and carts go by;
Senates and schools go droning on;
For dead things cannot die. 


A storm stooped on the place of tombs
With bolts to blast and rive;
But these be names of many men
The lightning found alive. 


If usurers rule and rights decay
And visions view once more
Great Carthage like a golden shell
Gape hollow on the shore, 


Still to the last of crumbling time
Upon this stone be read
How many men of England died
To prove they were not dead.

Just read this over a few times. Slowly.
See how amazing Uncle Gilbert is? This is why he should be studied in classrooms and lecture halls alongside Dickens (Chesterton's biography of whom I have recently started,) Elliot, Pope, Lewis et c.

This has been a post.

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