G.K. Chesterton is the author who has had the biggest influence on my life. When it comes to his poetry, though, I have mixed feelings. Some of it ("To the Babe Unborn", "Lepanto", "The Donkey", "The House of Christmas", and the dedicatory poem at the start of The Man Who Was Thursday) is, in my opinion, absolutely first-rate: deserving of a place in any English poetry anthology. I think he could have been one of the great English poets if he had dedicated himself to poetry.
I wouldn't put "The Rolling English Road" in this class, but it's hard to say why. I've been looking for its weaknesses and all I can really find is the third verse, which seems excessively oblique to me. Or is it? I always thought it referred to some particular person (real or imaginary), but now I assume it refers to the "rolling English drunkard" of the second line. Is he a sort of archetypal figure, like the English solder in the modern Christmas song "Stop the Cavalry" who has been fighting in centuries of wars?
And what exactly does Chesterton mean when he says: "My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage, or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age?" Is it a rejection of artificial revivalism? I don't know. I've never known. Maybe I'm too stupid.
But that's enough about the poem's weaknesses, which might be just my lack of appreciation.
When it comes to the poem's strengths, I think the rollicking metre might be the best thing about it. It's so hearty, masculine, folkish, full of gusto, and everything that we love about Chesterton-- everything that is a corrective to cynicism, decadence, nihilism, swank, and all that kind of thing. It's a very avuncular, hand-rubbing, red-cheeked kind of poem-- and I like that.
I like its use of repetitions and patterns. It's a bit like a nursery rhyme. I like how it uses place-names and gives their very ordinariness a magical sound. I love its use of very English terms like parson, sexton, and squire.
And some of the lines are just a joy to read and repeat. "The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road"-- that seems like a line from a skipping chant or a children's game, it has a sort of timeless energy.
My favourite four lines in the poem come from the second verse, and they very frequently come into my mind. They are:
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
That's not only marvellously John Bull-ish, but I think encapsulates the poem's theme: the beauty of irregularity and the organic, as opposed to deadening regularity and rationalism. Also, they express my own Francophobia, even though Chesterton himself was a Francophile. ("All bad ideas come from France", as David Starkey says.) All prejudices aside, however, I'm opposed to all attempts to flatten the delicious irregularity of human societies.
I also love the couple of lines at the end of each verse. Can it be called a refrain? It's not exactly a refrain, since it's not the same lines each time, or even close to it. But it's something like a refrain. In them, the poet addresses us directly, in the manner of an old friend who has shared many adventures. It's rather odd-- what does it mean, exactly?-- but it works. It creates a warm, retrospective, comradely glow. I've yearned for that kind of thing in my own life, but I worry I'm too old to enjoy it now.
The more I've written this blog post, the more I'm coming to think that this is, actually, a great poem after all, and that I simply don't fully understand it. It's a strange thing-- I've always assumed this poem is much better-known than it is. It seems like the sort of poem that should be a popular favourite, to have seeped into the cultural conscience. But it's not, and it hasn't.
The Rolling English Road
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
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