vitality demands boisterous
movement, more even than coherence. Sometimes the boisterousness is
apparently unsupported by the sense of the words.

So you have gained the golden crowns and grasped the golden weather,
The kingdoms and the hemispheres that all men buy and sell,
But I will lash the leaping drum and swing the flaring feather,
For the light of seven heavens that are lost to me like hell.

Here the stanza actually goes with such a swing that the reader will in
all probability not notice that the lines have no particular meaning.

On the other hand, Chesterton's poetry has exuberant moments of sheer
delight. In one of his essays he is lamenting the songlessness of modern
life and suggests one or two chanties. Here they are:

Chorus of Bank Clerks:

Up, my lads, and lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o'er.
Hear the Stars of Morning shouting: "Two and Two are Four."
Though the creeds and realms are reeling, though the sophists roar,
Though we weep and pawn our watches, Two and Two are Four.

Chorus of Bank Clerks when there is a run on the bank:

There's a run upon the Bank--
Stand away!
For the Manager's a crank and the Secretary drank, and the Upper
Tooting Bank
Turns to bay!

Stand close: there is a run
On the Bank.
Of our ship, our royal one, let the ringing legend run, that she
fired with every gun
Ere she sank.

The Post Office Hymn would begin as follows:

O'er London our letters are shaken like snow,
Our wires o'er the world like the thunderbolts go.
The news that may marry a maiden in Sark,
Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park.

Chorus (with a swing of joy and energy):

Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park.

The joke becomes simply immense when we picture the actual singing of
the songs.

But that is not the only class of humour of which Chesterton is capable.
He can cut as well as hack. It is to be doubted whether any politician
was ever addressed in lines more sarcastic than those of _Antichrist_,
an ode to Mr. F. E. Smith. This gentleman, speaking on the Welsh
Disestablishment Bill, remarked that it "has shocked the conscience of
every Christian community in Europe." It begins:

Are they clinging to their crosses,
F. E. Smith.
Where the Breton boat-fleet tosses,
Are they, Smith?
Do they, fasting, t