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Friday poem
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“The Aristocrat” by G.K. Chesterton
The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What’sitsname (it isn’t far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;
But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t brag himself.
O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What’sitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that’s played behind its door,
Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,
Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t keep his word.
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Messiah complex
Three out of last five Friday poems have been by Chesterton.
Whassup with ‘dat?
I found a great big stockpile of them on the internet. And I like them. And this will likely be the last for a while, because I ran out of ones I liked. Oh, and Chesterton writes one of my two favorite kinds of poems: funny rhyming poems about ideas (politics, etc.). I also like non-funny descriptive poems about non-ideas.
Actually, this poem caught my eye because I’m teaching THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS in Sunday school, and I thought the class would appreciate hearing the poem. So much of the book turns the idea of pleasure on its head: its uses to Screwtape, its perversions and the enjoyment of it, etc. The poem does a good job of positing the Devil as a man whose life is spent in the wispy, melt-away world of false pleasure. And it uses language in a way that makes you have to read a bit more slowly, which is what good poems are good at doing.
Yes, I really liked the line, “There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain.”
I like the poem, it rhymes it has rhythm, and it has meaning. The devil is a liar and the father of lies. Like Modor, in The Silmirillion. He is incapable of good, but he is capable of deception. It may look good for a long time, but in the end is disaster.