uld be
quoted, whatever else is omitted, for the sake of their essential
Christianity, their claim that a man may make a fool of himself for
Christ's sake, whatever the bishops have to say about it.

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.

In his last volume of _Poems_ (1915) Chesterton presents us with a
varied collection of works, written at any time during the last twelve
or so years. The pugnacious element is present in _Lepanto_, through the
staccato syllables of which we hear drum-taps and men cheering. There is
a temptation to treat _Lepanto_, and indeed most of Chesterton's poems,
with special reference to their technique, but we must resist this
temptation, with tears if need be, and with prayer, for to give way to
it would be to commit a form of vivisection. G.K.C. is not a text,
praise be, and whether he lives or dies, long may he be spared the hands
of an editor or interpreter who is also an irrepressible authority on
anapaests and suchlike things. He is a poet, and a considerable poet,
not because of his strict attention to the rules of prosody, but because
he cannot help himself, and the rules in question are for the persons
who can, the poets by deliberate intention, the writers who polish
unceasingly. Chesterton has more impulse than finish, but he has natural
gifts of rhythm and the effective use of words which more or less
(according to the reader's taste) compensate for his refusal or his
incapacity to take pains.

Finally there are the religious poems. From these we can best judge the
reality of Chesterton's poetic impulse, for here, knowing that
affectation would be almost indecent, he has expressed what he had to
express with a care denied to most of his other works. In one of his
essays, G.K.C. exults in that matchless phrase of Vaughan, "high
humility." He has both adopted and adapted this quality, and the results
are wonderful. In _The Wise Men_ occurs this stanza:

The Child that was ere worlds begun
(. . . We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone . . .)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is play