GK Chesterton,.Apostle of Common Sense

GK Chesterton,the Apostle of Common Sense is on EWTN every Sunday night at 9:00 pm EST. Dale Alqhuist hosts and this man an expert on GK. He's the President of the American GK Society and publishes a magazine called Gilbert. Dedicated to GK of course. Last night Mr Alqhuist discussed GK's poem The Ballad of the White Horse. One of the points Alqhuist made was a home run. Our society (culture)is not interested in seeking truth but in seeking pleasure. You see the primary goal of education is to seek truth. Liberalism has so infected our culture,society and EDUCATION that we no longer have a generation seeking truth. As long as this is true no matter how much money you throw at our education system it will fail.Today we even heard a supporter of the President call a group of American citizens SOB's (and he used the whole word)and that they ought to be taken out. You have to wonder how he could say this in front of a large audience,televised and not be taken to task. Even if we have a conservative administration-and maybe more so-we will have a moral battle going on. They paint decent people as extreme because the swamp is the new norm. They will say we're intolerant,tyrannical,backwards. The Church,Alqhuist pointed out,brought civilization out of the dark ages when barbarians ruled and he said the Church would lead us out of the Dark Ages again. How big a battle this is because we have been silenced. If we speak out we're branded as intolerant. Yes,were intolerant.Who on earth has to tolerate evil? Liberalism has infected our culture and eaten away at it.Destroyed families. Corrupted youth.It is taking away from parents the right to teach their own children their own values.

Following the promulgation of the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum 15 in 1891, the young Chesterton had been attacking socialists, particularly George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, in print—see his book Heretics, which is largely an attack upon them. Chesterton and Belloc founded the Distributist movement, calling for local control of economic institutions, and that private property should be divided into the smallest possible freeholds and then distributed throughout society. Chesterton debated Shaw and Wells publicly on social principles, opposing socialism with Catholic social teaching.

Source: Tumblarhouse.com,Catholic Literature THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE,GK CHESTERTON Part I By G.K. Chesterton DEDICATION Of great limbs gone to chaos, A great face turned to night-- Why bend above a shapeless shroud Seeking in such archaic cloud Sight of strong lords and light? Where seven sunken Englands Lie buried one by one, Why should one idle spade, I wonder, Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder To smoke and choke the sun? In cloud of clay so cast to heaven What shape shall man discern? These lords may light the mystery Of mastery or victory, And these ride high in history, But these shall not return. Gored on the Norman gonfalon The Golden Dragon died: We shall not wake with ballad strings The good time of the smaller things, We shall not see the holy kings Ride down by Severn side. Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured As the broidery of Bayeux The England of that dawn remains, And this of Alfred and the Danes Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns Too English to be true. Of a good king on an island That ruled once on a time; And as he walked by an apple tree There came green devils out of the sea With sea-plants trailing heavily And tracks of opal slime. Yet Alfred is no fairy tale; His days as our days ran, He also looked forth for an hour On peopled plains and skies that lower, From those few windows in the tower That is the head of a man. But who shall look from Alfred's hood Or breathe his breath alive? His century like a small dark cloud Drifts far; it is an eyeless crowd, Where the tortured trumpets scream aloud And the dense arrows drive. Lady, by one light only We look from Alfred's eyes, We know he saw athwart the wreck The sign that hangs about your neck, Where One more than Melchizedek Is dead and never dies. Therefore I bring these rhymes to you Who brought the cross to me, Since on you flaming without flaw I saw the sign that Guthrum saw When he let break his ships of awe, And laid peace on the sea. Do you remember when we went Under a dragon moon, And `mid volcanic tints of night Walked where they fought the unknown fight And saw black trees on the battle-height, Black thorn on Ethandune? And I thought, "I will go with you, As man with God has gone, And wander with a wandering star, The wandering heart of things that are, The fiery cross of love and war That like yourself, goes on." O go you onward; where you are Shall honour and laughter be, Past purpled forest and pearled foam, God's winged pavilion free to roam, Your face, that is a wandering home, A flying home for me. Ride through the silent earthquake lands, Wide as a waste is wide, Across these days like deserts, when Pride and a little scratching pen Have dried and split the hearts of men, Heart of the heroes, ride. Up through an empty house of stars, Being what heart you are, Up the inhuman steeps of space As on a staircase go in grace, Carrying the firelight on your face Beyond the loneliest star. Take these; in memory of the hour We strayed a space from home And saw the smoke-hued hamlets, quaint With Westland king and Westland saint, And watched the western glory faint Along the road to Frome. BOOK I THE VISION OF THE KING Before the gods that made the gods Had seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was cut out of the grass. Before the gods that made the gods Had drunk at dawn their fill, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was hoary on the hill. Age beyond age on British land, Aeons on aeons gone, Was peace and war in western hills, And the White Horse looked on. For the White Horse knew England When there was none to know; He saw the first oar break or bend, He saw heaven fall and the world end, O God, how long ago. For the end of the world was long ago, And all we dwell to-day As children of some second birth, Like a strange people left on earth After a judgment day. For the end of the world was long ago, When the ends of the world waxed free, When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves, And the sun drowned in the sea. When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky And whoso hearkened right Could only hear the plunging Of the nations in the night. When the ends of the earth came marching in To torch and cresset gleam. And the roads of the world that lead to Rome Were filled with faces that moved like foam, Like faces in a dream. And men rode out of the eastern lands, Broad river and burning plain; Trees that are Titan flowers to see, And tiger skies, striped horribly, With tints of tropic rain. Where Ind's enamelled peaks arise Around that inmost one, Where ancient eagles on its brink, Vast as archangels, gather and drink The sacrament of the sun. And men brake out of the northern lands, Enormous lands alone, Where a spell is laid upon life and lust And the rain is changed to a silver dust And the sea to a great green stone. And a Shape that moveth murkily In mirrors of ice and night, Hath blanched with fear all beasts and birds, As death and a shock of evil words Blast a man's hair with white. And the cry of the palms and the purple moons, Or the cry of the frost and foam, Swept ever around an inmost place, And the din of distant race on race Cried and replied round Rome. And there was death on the Emperor And night upon the Pope: And Alfred, hiding in deep grass, Hardened his heart with hope. A sea-folk blinder than the sea Broke all about his land, But Alfred up against them bare And gripped the ground and grasped the air, Staggered, and strove to stand. He bent them back with spear and spade, With desperate dyke and wall, With foemen leaning on his shield And roaring on him when he reeled; And no help came at all. He broke them with a broken sword A little towards the sea, And for one hour of panting peace, Ringed with a roar that would not cease, With golden crown and girded fleece Made laws under a tree. The Northmen came about our land A Christless chivalry: Who knew not of the arch or pen, Great, beautiful half-witted men From the sunrise and the sea. Misshapen ships stood on the deep Full of strange gold and fire, And hairy men, as huge as sin With horned heads, came wading in Through the long, low sea-mire. Our towns were shaken of tall kings With scarlet beards like blood: The world turned empty where they trod, They took the kindly cross of God And cut it up for wood. Their souls were drifting as the sea, And all good towns and lands They only saw with heavy eyes, And broke with heavy hands, Their gods were sadder than the sea, Gods of a wandering will, Who cried for blood like beasts at night, Sadly, from hill to hill. They seemed as trees walking the earth, As witless and as tall, Yet they took hold upon the heavens And no help came at all. They bred like birds in English woods, They rooted like the rose, When Alfred came to Athelney To hide him from their bows There was not English armour left, Nor any English thing, When Alfred came to Athelney To be an English king. For earthquake swallowing earthquake Uprent the Wessex tree; The whirlpool of the pagan sway Had swirled his sires as sticks away When a flood smites the sea. And the great kings of Wessex Wearied and sank in gore, And even their ghosts in that great stress Grew greyer and greyer, less and less, With the lords that died in Lyonesse And the king that comes no more. And the God of the Golden Dragon Was dumb upon his throne, And the lord of the Golden Dragon Ran in the woods alone. And if ever he climbed the crest of luck And set the flag before, Returning as a wheel returns, Came ruin and the rain that burns, And all began once more. And naught was left King Alfred But shameful tears of rage, In the island in the river In the end of all his age. In the island in the river He was broken to his knee: And he read, writ with an iron pen, That God had wearied of Wessex men And given their country, field and fen, To the devils of the sea. And he saw in a little picture, Tiny and far away, His mother sitting in Egbert's hall, And a book she showed him, very small, Where a sapphire Mary sat in stall With a golden Christ at play. It was wrought in the monk's slow manner, From silver and sanguine shell, Where the scenes are little and terrible, Keyholes of heaven and hell. In the river island of Athelney, With the river running past, In colours of such simple creed All things sprang at him, sun and weed, Till the grass grew to be grass indeed And the tree was a tree at last. Fearfully plain the flowers grew, Like the child's book to read, Or like a friend's face seen in a glass; He looked; and there Our Lady was, She stood and stroked the tall live grass As a man strokes his steed. Her face was like an open word When brave men speak and choose, The very colours of her coat Were better than good news. She spoke not, nor turned not, Nor any sign she cast, Only she stood up straight and free, Between the flowers in Athelney, And the river running past. One dim ancestral jewel hung On his ruined armour grey, He rent and cast it at her feet: Where, after centuries, with slow feet, Men came from hall and school and street And found it where it lay. "Mother of God," the wanderer said, "I am but a common king, Nor will I ask what saints may ask, To see a secret thing. "The gates of heaven are fearful gates Worse than the gates of hell; Not I would break the splendours barred Or seek to know the thing they guard, Which is too good to tell. "But for this earth most pitiful, This little land I know, If that which is for ever is, Or if our hearts shall break with bliss, Seeing the stranger go? "When our last bow is broken, Queen, And our last javelin cast, Under some sad, green evening sky, Holding a ruined cross on high, Under warm westland grass to lie, Shall we come home at last?" And a voice came human but high up, Like a cottage climbed among The clouds; or a serf of hut and croft That sits by his hovel fire as oft, But hears on his old bare roof aloft A belfry burst in song. "The gates of heaven are lightly locked, We do not guard our gain, The heaviest hind may easily Come silently and suddenly Upon me in a lane. "And any little maid that walks In good thoughts apart, May break the guard of the Three Kings And see the dear and dreadful things I hid within my heart. "The meanest man in grey fields gone Behind the set of sun, Heareth between star and other star, Through the door of the darkness fallen ajar, The council, eldest of things that are, The talk of the Three in One. "The gates of heaven are lightly locked, We do not guard our gold, Men may uproot where worlds begin, Or read the name of the nameless sin; But if he fail or if he win To no good man is told. "The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark. "The men of the East may search the scrolls For sure fates and fame, But the men that drink the blood of God Go singing to their shame. "The wise men know what wicked things Are written on the sky, They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings, Hearing the heavy purple wings, Where the forgotten seraph kings Still plot how God shall die. "The wise men know all evil things Under the twisted trees, Where the perverse in pleasure pine And men are weary of green wine And sick of crimson seas. "But you and all the kind of Christ Are ignorant and brave, And you have wars you hardly win And souls you hardly save. "I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher. "Night shall be thrice night over you, And heaven an iron cope. Do you have joy without a cause, Yea, faith without a hope?" Even as she spoke she was not, Nor any word said he, He only heard, still as he stood Under the old night's nodding hood, The sea-folk breaking down the wood Like a high tide from sea. He only heard the heathen men, Whose eyes are blue and bleak, Singing about some cruel thing Done by a great and smiling king In daylight on a deck. He only heard the heathen men, Whose eyes are blue and blind, Singing what shameful things are done Between the sunlit sea and the sun When the land is left behind.