Poetry For The Perplexed

Here are two of my favourite poems – both by the same author and dealing with related themes, but from two very different perspectives. I’ve never seen these two poems presented together like this before, but I think they complement each other nicely. Maybe “poetry to die for” would not be the most helpful description, so let’s just say that, for me, this is the kind of poetry that helps to make life worth living.

Thou Shalt Not Kill

I had grown weary of him; of his breath
And hands and features I was sick to death.
Each day I heard the same dull voice and tread;
I did not hate him: but I wished him dead.
And he must with his blank face fill my life—
Then my brain blackened; and I snatched a knife.

But ere I struck, my soul’s grey deserts through
A voice cried, “Know at least what thing you do.”
“This is a common man: knowest thou, O soul,
What this thing is? somewhere where seasons roll
There is some living thing for whom this man
Is as seven heavens girt into a span,
For some one soul you take the world away—
Now know you well your deed and purpose. Slay!”

Then I cast down the knife upon the ground
And saw that mean man for one moment crowned.
I turned and laughed: for there was no one by—
The man that I had sought to slay was I.

G. K. CHESTERTON

A Ballad 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 trump 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