Poems

This selection gathers the verse Chesterton wrote in the first decades of the twentieth century. Narrative pieces include the battle-ode Lepanto and passages from The Ballad of the White Horse, in which King Alfred fights the Danes. Shorter lyrics praise inns, roads, donkeys, and ordinary English weather as arguments against pessimism and imperial swagger. Religious poems and political satires address heresy, the poor, and the modern city. The manner is rhetorical, rhymed, and meant to be spoken aloud. The book is a gathering of ballads, drinking songs, and occasional pieces, not a novel and not his essays in another form.

Bound in pale orange cloth, cover printed with a design by Lawrence. Grey endleaves. Grey slipcase.