PRINCESS. At least I had good reasons in choosing you as a diplomatist. I am glad to note that you have a clear mind and a very logical method of persuasion. Like a good many other men with clear minds, you do not understand women.

  KING (furiously). By Hecate, but I think I understand one woman! All you care for is power. You are the real autocrat. I rule kingdoms and lead big armies into battles; and in armies men must do as they are told, or they all die together. But I am not such a despot as you are. In your heart and soul, you are more of a bully when you feed one beggar than I am when I am driven to lay waste a province. You want to win the battle. I only want the battle to be won. We who live in camps have at least good fellowship and can often be glad when a comrade covers himself with glory. I have known men who were great enough to be glad when a comrade had redeemed their own blunder. But you will not let us redeem your blunder. You care for nothing but your plan.

  PRINCESS. Who has thought for anybody but themselves in all this business but I? I have thought for everybody else and all my thoughts are to go for nothing.

  POET. I should like you to think for yourself.

  PRINCESS. AS His Majesty condescends to say, I had a plan. As a mother has a plan for babes unborn; as a creator has a plan for worlds uncreated. For all you knew of that, you might as well have been uncreated or unborn. Yes, in that sense I looked to the triumph of my plan.

  Enter Donna Maria down the steps from the chapel; she is deadwhite but her face is without expression.

  PRINCESS (rushing towards her as if released). You at least know I never meant to bring you to all this misery. You obeyed me; but you know I did not only want your obedience. I did love you at least — we have always loved each other — you do know that, do you not?

  Maria looks at her with a blank face and does not answer.

  POET (intervening tactfully). Donna Maria, this is too distressing a business for you to be forced into it any further. Perhaps I might be permitted to summon your attendants or escort you towards your apartment.

  Maria looks at him with the same uncomprehending face, and preserves the same silence. The King stands quite still where he is; but has an air of swelling and glowing from within, because of her presence.

  KING. Maria! You will hear my voice at least; when I say I love you.

  Maria is still silent, with the same dazed expression. The King continues almost sharply.

  KING. Maria! You cannot be struck deaf and dumb. It is I and I have lost all and chosen you. And you say nothing. Say at least that you can hear me speak.

  (Maria is silent as before.) My God, you have sent her mad between you. She has lost her reason.

  PRINCESS. We, Your Majesty? Did we break tryst at the altar, where she was waiting as a bride? Did we dally with another on the way?

  KING. YOU witch, you queen of devils — it was you —

  POET (bursting out). Choke with your lies, you mudmouthed liar! Do you think I care that you are a king, now that you are less than a man? Do you think I will hear such snarling at the Princess, without sticking a skewer through a rat? Defend yourself.

  (He draws his sword and rushes forward).

  KING (amazed for the moment). A fight?

  POET. Yes, Your Majesty — A fight without cannons or cavalry or convenient hills from which to survey the campaign or hosts of poor men to perish between you and the enemy. Fight in the devil’s name if you will; I fight in my lady’s.

  KING (drawing his sword). In the devil’s name, then. On that at least I can prove you are the liar.

  Their swords clash and engage.

  AUTHOR (his head bursting out through an upper part of the scenery). And in the devil’s name, what do you think you are doing with my play? Drop it! Stop! I am coming down.

  Curtain.

  The Poetry Collections

  George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton.

  GREYBEARDS AT PLAY

  CONTENTS

  A DEDICATION TO E.C.B.

  OF THE DANGERS ATTENDING ALTRUISM ON THE HIGH SEAS

  MORAL

  ON THE DISASTROUS SPREAD OF ÆSTHETICISM IN ALL CLASSES

  ENVOY

  GREYBEARDS AT PLAY

  LITERATURE AND ART FOR OLD GENTLEMEN

  RHYMES AND SKETCHES BY GILBERT CHESTERTON

  A DEDICATION TO E.C.B.

  He was, through boyhood’s storm and shower,

  My best, my nearest friend;

  We wore one hat, smoked one cigar,

  One standing at each end.

  We were two hearts with single hope,

  Two faces in one hood;

  I knew the secrets of his youth;

  I watched his every mood.

  The little things that none but I

  Saw were beyond his wont,

  The streaming hair, the tie behind,

  The coat tails worn in front.

  I marked the absent-minded scream,

  The little nervous trick

  Of rolling in the grate, with eyes

  By friendship’s light made quick.

  But youth’s black storms are gone and past,

  Bare is each aged brow;

  And, since with age we’re growing bald,

  Let us be babies now.

  Learning we knew; but still to-day,

  With spelling-book devotion,

  Words of one syllable we seek

  In moments of emotion.

  Riches we knew; and well dressed dolls —

  Dolls living — who expressed

  No filial thoughts, however much

  You thumped them in the chest.

  Old happiness is grey as we,

  And we may still outstrip her;

  If we be slippered pantaloons,

  Oh let us hunt the slipper!

  The old world glows with colours clear;

  And if, as saith the saint,

  The world is but a painted show,

  Oh let us lick the paint!

  Far, far behind are morbid hours,

  And lonely hearts that bleed.

  Far, far behind us are the days,

  When we were old indeed.

  Leave we the child: he is immersed

  With scientists and mystics:

  With deep prophetic voice he cries

  Canadian food statistics.

  But now I know how few and small,

  The things we crave need be —

  Toys and the universe and you —

  A little friend to tea.

  Behold the simple sum of things,

  Where, in one splendour spun,

  The stars go round the Mulberry Bush,

  The Burning Bush, the Sun.

  Now we are old and wise and grey,

  And shaky at the knees;

  Now is the true time to delight

  In picture books like these.

  Hoary and bent I dance one hour:

  What though I die at morn?

  There is a shout among the stars,

  “To-night a child is born.”

  THE ONENESS OF THE PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE.

  I love to see the little stars

  All dancing to one tune;

  I think quite highly of the Sun,

  And kindly of the Moon.

  The million forests of the Earth

  Come trooping in to tea.

  The great Niagara waterfall

  Is never shy with me.

  I am the tiger’s confidant,

  And never mention names:

  The lion drops the formal “Sir,”

  And lets me call him James.

  Into my ear the blushing Whale

  Stammers his love. I know

  Why the Rhinoceros is sad,

  — Ah, child! ’twas long ago.

  I am akin to all the Earth

  By many a tribal sign:

  The aged Pig will often wear

  That sad, sweet smile of mine.

  My niece, the Barnacle, has got

  My piercing eyes of black;

  The Elephant has got my nose,

  I do not want it back.

  I know the strange tale of the Slug;

  The Early Sin — the Fall —

  The Sleep — the Vision — and the Vow —

  The Quest — the Crown — the Call.

  And I have loved the Octopus,

  Since we were boys together.

  I love the Vulture and the Shark:

  I even love the weather.

  I love to bask in sunny fields,

  And when that hope is vain,

  I go and bask in Baker Street,

  All in the pouring rain.

  Come snow! where fly, by some strange law,

  Hard snowballs — without noise —

  Through streets untenanted, except

  By good unconscious boys.

  Come fog! exultant mystery —

  Where, in strange darkness rolled,

  The end of my own nose becomes

  A lovely legend old.

  Come snow, and hail, and thunderbolts,

  Sleet, fire, and general fuss;

  Come to my arms, come all at once —

  Oh photograph me thus!

  OF THE DANGERS ATTENDING ALTRUISM ON THE HIGH SEAS

  Observe these Pirates bold and gay,

  That sail a gory sea:

  Notice their bright expression: —

  The handsome one is me.

  We plundered ships and harbours,

  We spoiled the Spanish main;

  But Nemesis watched over us,

  For it began to rain.

  Oh all well-meaning folk take heed!

  Our Captain’s fate was sore;

  A more well-meaning Pirate,

  Had never dripped with gore.

  The rain was pouring long and loud,

  The sea was drear and dim;

  A little fish was floating there:

  Our Captain pitied him.

  “How sad,” he said, and dropped a tear

  Splash on the cabin roof,

  “That we are dry, while he is there

  Without a waterproof.

  “We’ll get him up on board at once;

  For Science teaches me,

  He will be wet if he remains

  Much longer in the sea.”

  They fished him out; the First Mate wept,

  And came with rugs and ale:

  The Boatswain brought him one golosh,

  And fixed it on his tail.

  But yet he never loved the ship;

  Against the mast he’d lean;

  If spoken to, he coughed and smiled,

  And blushed a pallid green.

  Though plied with hardbake, beef and beer,

  He showed no wish to sup:

  The neatest riddles they could ask,

  He always gave them up.

  They seized him and court-martialled him,

  In some excess of spleen,

  For lack of social sympathy,

  (Victoria xii. 18).

  They gathered every evidence

  That might remove a doubt:

  They wrote a postcard in his name,

  And partly scratched it out.

  Till, when his guilt was clear as day,

  With all formality

  They doomed the traitor to be drowned,

  And threw him in the sea.

  The flashing sunset, as he sank,

  Made every scale a gem;

  And, turning with a graceful bow,

  He kissed his fin to them.

  MORAL

  I am, I think I have remarked,

  Terrifically old,

  (The second Ice-age was a farce,

  The first was rather cold.)

  A friend of mine, a trilobite

  Had gathered in his youth,

  When trilobites were trilobites,

  This all-important truth.

  We aged ones play solemn parts —

  Sire — guardian — uncle — king.

  Affection is the salt of life,

  Kindness a noble thing.

  The old alone may comprehend

  A sense in my decree;

  But — if you find a fish on land,

  Oh throw it in the sea.

  ON THE DISASTROUS SPREAD OF ÆSTHETICISM IN ALL CLASSES

  Impetuously I sprang from bed,

  Long before lunch was up,

  That I might drain the dizzy dew

  From day’s first golden cup.

  In swift devouring ecstacy

  Each toil in turn was done;

  I had done lying on the lawn

  Three minutes after one.

  For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,

  The duties shine like stars;

  I formed my uncle’s character,

  Decreasing his cigars.

  But could my kind engross me? No!

  Stern Art — what sons escape her?

  Soon I was drawing Gladstone’s nose

  On scraps of blotting paper.

  Then on — to play one-fingered tunes

  Upon my aunt’s piano.

  In short, I have a headlong soul,

  I much resemble Hanno.

  (Forgive the entrance of the not

  Too cogent Carthaginian.

  It may have been to make a rhyme;

  I lean to that opinion).

  Then my great work of book research

  Till dusk I took in hand —

  The forming of a final, sound

  Opinion on The Strand.

  But when I quenched the midnight oil,

  And closed The Referee,

  Whose thirty volumes folio

  I take to bed with me,

  I had a rather funny dream,

  Intense, that is, and mystic;

  I dreamed that, with one leap and yell,

  The world became artistic.

  The Shopmen, when their souls were still,

  Declined to open shops —

  And Cooks recorded frames of mind

  In sad and subtle chops.

  The stars were weary of routine:

  The trees in the plantation

  Were growing every fruit at once,

  In search of a sensation.

  The moon went for a moonlight stroll,

  And tried to be a bard,

  And gazed enraptured at itself:

  I left it trying hard.

  The sea had nothing but a mood

  Of ‘vague ironic gloom,’

  With which t’explain its presence in

  My upstairs drawing-room.

  The sun had read a little book

  That struck him with a notion:

  He drowned himself and all his fires

  Deep in the hissing ocean.

  Then all was dark, lawless, and lost:

  I heard great devilish wings:

  I knew that Art had won, and snapt

  The Covenant of Things.

  I cried aloud, and I awoke,

  New labours in my head.

  I set my teeth, and manfully

  Began to lie in bed.

  Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,

  So I my life conduct.

  Each morning see some task begun,

  Each evening see it chucked.

  But still, in sudden moods of dusk,

  I hear those great weird wings,

  Feel vaguely thankful to the vast

  Stupidity of things.

  ENVOY

  Clear was the night: the moon was young:

  The larkspurs in the plots

  Mingled their orange with the gold

  Of the forget-me-nots.

  The poppies seemed a silver mist:

  So darkly fell the gloom.

  You scarce had guessed yon crimson streaks

  Were buttercups in bloom.

  But one thing moved: a little child

  Crashed through the flower and fern:

  And all my soul rose up to greet

  The sage of whom I learn.

  I looked into his awful eyes:

  I waited his decree:

  I made ingenious attempts

  To sit upon his knee.

  The babe upraised his wondering eyes,

  And timidly he said,

  “A trend towards experiment

  In modern minds is bred.

  “I feel the will to roam, to learn

  By test, experience, nous,

  That fire is hot and ocean deep,

  And wolves carnivorous.

  “My brain demands complexity.”

  The lisping cherub cried.

  I looked at him, and only said,

  “Go on. The world is wide.”

  A tear rolled down his pinafore,

  “Yet from my life must pass

  The simple love of sun and moon,

  The old games in the grass;

  “Now that my back is to my home

  Could these again be found?”

  I looked on him, and only said,

  “Go on. The world is round.”

  THE WILD KNIGHT AND OTHER POEMS

  CONTENTS

  THE ONENESS OF THE PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE.

  BY THE BABE UNBORN

  THE WORLD’S LOVER

  THE SKELETON

  A CHORD OF COLOUR

  THE HAPPY MAN

  THE UNPARDONABLE SIN

  A NOVELTY

  ULTIMATE

  THE DONKEY

  THE BEATIFIC VISION

  THE HOPE OF THE STREETS

  ECCLESIASTES

  THE SONG OF THE CHILDREN

  THE FISH

  GOLD LEAVES

  THOU SHALT NOT KILL

  A CERTAIN EVENING