Transcriber's Note:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation; no changes have been made to the original text.

WINE, WATER, AND SONG

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

• CHARLES DICKENS
• THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE
• THE FLYING INN
• ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
• TREMENDOUS TRIFLES
• ALARMS AND DISCURSIONS
• A MISCELLANY OF MEN

WINE, WATER
AND SONG

BY
G. K. CHESTERTON

THIRD EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

NOTE

The Songs in this book are taken from “ The Flying Inn,” with the exception of “The Good Rich Man” and “The Song of the Strange Ascetic,” which are here included by kind permission of the editor of The New Witness, where they originally appeared.

CONTENTS

WINE, WATER, AND SONG

The Englishman

St. George he was for England,

And before he killed the dragon

He drank a pint of English ale

Out of an English flagon.

For though he fast right readily

In hair-shirt or in mail,

It isn't safe to give him cakes

Unless you give him ale.

St. George he was for England,

And right gallantly set free

The lady left for dragon's meat

And tied up to a tree;

But since he stood for England

And knew what England means,

Unless you give him bacon

You mustn't give him beans.

St. George he is for England,

And shall wear the shield he wore

When we go out in armour

With the battle-cross before.

But though he is jolly company

And very pleased to dine,

It isn't safe to give him nuts

Unless you give him wine.

Wine and Water

Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale,

He ate his egg with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail,

And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and the fish he took was Whale,

But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail,

And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,

“I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.”

The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brink

As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink,

The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink,

And Noah he cocked his eye and said, “It looks like rain, I think,

The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine,

But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.”

But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod,

Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod,

And you can't get wine at a P.S.A., or chapel, or Eisteddfod,

For the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God,

And water is on the Bishop's board and the Higher Thinker's shrine,

But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.

The Song Against Grocers

God made the wicked Grocer

For a mystery and a sign,

That men might shun the awful shops

And go to inns to dine;

Where the bacon's on the rafter

And the wine is in the wood,

And God that made good laughter

Has seen that they are good.

The evil-hearted Grocer

Would call his mother “Ma'am,”

And bow at her and bob at her,

Her aged soul to damn,

And rub his horrid hands and ask

What article was next,

Though mortis in articulo

Should be her proper text.

His props are not his children,

But pert lads underpaid,

Who call out “Cash!” and bang about

To work his wicked trade;

He keeps a lady in a cage

Most cruelly all day,

And makes her count and calls her “Miss”

Until she fades away.

The righteous minds of innkeepers

Induce them now and then

To crack a bottle with a friend

Or treat unmoneyed men,

But who hath seen the Grocer

Treat housemaids to his teas

Or crack a bottle of fish-sauce

Or stand a man a cheese?

He sells us sands of Araby

As sugar for cash down;

He sweeps his shop and sells the dust

The purest salt in town,

He crams with cans of poisoned meat

Poor subjects of the King,

And when they die by thousands

Why, he laughs like anything.

The wicked Grocer groces

In spirits and in wine,

Not frankly and in fellowship

As men in inns do dine;

But packed with soap and sardines

And carried off by grooms,

For to be snatched by Duchesses

And drunk in dressing-rooms.

The hell-instructed Grocer

Has a temple made of tin,

And the ruin of good innkeepers

Is loudly urged therein;

But now the sands are running out

From sugar of a sort,

The Grocer trembles; for his time,

Just like his weight, is short.

The Rolling English Road

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

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 strengthing 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.

The Song of Quoodle

They haven't got no noses,

The fallen sons of Eve;

Even the smell of roses

Is not what they supposes;

But more than mind discloses

And more than men believe.

They haven't got no noses,

They cannot even tell

When door and darkness closes

The park a Jew encloses,

Where even the Law of Moses

Will let you steal a smell.

The brilliant smell of water,

The brave smell of a stone,

The smell of dew and thunder,

The old bones buried under,

Are things in which they blunder

And err, if left alone.

The wind from winter forests,

The scent of scentless flowers,

The breath of brides' adorning,

The smell of snare and warning,

The smell of Sunday morning,

God gave to us for ours.

. . . . .

And Quoodle here discloses

All things that Quoodle can,

They haven't got no noses,

They haven't got no noses,

And goodness only knowses

The Noselessness of Man.

Pioneers, O Pioneers

Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews

Suffered from new and original views,

He crawled on his hands and knees, it's said,

With grass in his mouth and a crown on his head.

With a wowtyiddly, etc.

Those in traditional paths that trod

Thought the thing was a curse from God,

But a Pioneer men always abuse

Like Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews.

Black Lord Foulon the Frenchman slew

Thought it a Futurist thing to do.

He offered them grass instead of bread.

So they stuffed him with grass when they cut off his head.

With a wowtyiddly, etc.

For the pride of his soul he perished then—

But of course it is always of Pride that men,

A Man in Advance of his Age accuse,

Like Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews.

Simeon Scudder of Styx, in Maine,

Thought of the thing and was at it again.

He gave good grass and water in pails

To a thousand Irishmen hammering rails.

With a wowtyiddly, etc.

Appetites differ; and tied to a stake

He was tarred and feathered for Conscience' Sake.

But stoning the prophets is ancient news,

Like Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews.

The Logical Vegetarian

“Why shouldn't I have a purely vegetarian drink? Why shouldn't I take vegetables in their highest form, so to speak? The modest vegetarians ought obviously to stick to wine or beer, plain vegetarian drinks, instead of filling their goblets with the blood of bulls and elephants, as all conventional meat-eaters do, I suppose.”—Dalroy.

You will find me drinking rum,

Like a sailor in a slum,

You will find me drinking beer like a Bavarian.

You will find me drinking gin

In the lowest kind of inn,

Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.

So I cleared the inn of wine,

And I tried to climb the sign,

And I tried to hail the constable as “Marion.”

But he said I couldn't speak,

And he bowled me to the Beak

Because I was a Happy Vegetarian.

Oh, I knew a Doctor Gluck,

And his nose it had a hook,

And his attitudes were anything but Aryan;

So I gave him all the pork

That I had, upon a fork;

Because I am myself a Vegetarian.

I am silent in the Club,

I am silent in the pub.,

I am silent on a bally peak in Darien;

For I stuff away for life

Shoving peas in with a knife,

Because I am at heart a Vegetarian.

No more the milk of cows

Shall pollute my private house

Than the milk of the wild mares of the Barbarian;

I will stick to port and sherry,

For they are so very, very,

So very, very, very Vegetarian.

“The Saracen's Head”

“The Saracen's Head” looks down the lane,

Where we shall never drink wine again,

For the wicked old women who feel well-bred

Have turned to a tea-shop “The Saracen's Head.”

“The Saracen's Head” out of Araby came,

King Richard riding in arms like flame,

And where he established his folk to be fed

He set up a spear—and the Saracen's Head.

But “The Saracen's Head” outlived the Kings,

It thought and it thought of most horrible things,

Of Health and of Soap and of Standard Bread,

And of Saracen drinks at “The Saracen's Head.”

So “The Saracen's Head” fulfils its name,

They drink no wine—a ridiculous game—

And I shall wonder until I'm dead,

How it ever came into the Saracen's Head.

The Good Rich Man

Mr. Mandragon, the Millionaire, he wouldn't have wine or wife,

He couldn't endure complexity: he lived the Simple Life.

He ordered his lunch by megaphone in manly, simple tones,

And used all his motors for canvassing voters, and twenty telephones;

Besides a dandy little machine,

Cunning and neat as ever was seen,

With a hundred pulleys and cranks between,

Made of metal and kept quite clean,

To hoist him out of his healthful bed on every day of his life,

And wash him and dress him and shave him and brush him

—to live the Simple Life.

Mr. Mandragon was most refined and quietly, neatly dressed,

Say all the American newspapers that know refinement best;

Quiet and neat the hat and hair and the coat quiet and neat,

A trouser worn upon either leg, while boots adorn the feet;

And not, as any one would expect,

A Tiger's Skin all striped and specked,

And a Peacock Hat with the tail erect,

A scarlet tunic with sunflowers decked,

Which might have had a more marked effect,

And pleased the pride of a weaker man that yearned for wine or wife;

But Fame and the Flagon, for Mr. Mandragon

—obscured the Simple Life.

Mr. Mandragon, the Millionaire, I am happy to say, is dead;

He enjoyed a quiet funeral in a Crematorium shed.

And he lies there fluffy and soft and grey and certainly quite refined;

When he might have rotted to flowers and fruit with Adam and all mankind,

Or been eaten by wolves athirst for blood,

Or burnt on a good tall pyre of wood,

In a towering flame, as a heathen should,

Or even sat with us here at food,

Merrily taking twopenny ale and pork with a pocket-knife;

But this was luxury not for one that went for the Simple Life.

The Song Against Songs

The song of the sorrow of Melisande is a weary song and a dreary song,

The glory of Mariana's grange had got into great decay,

The song of the Raven Never More has never been called a cheery song,

And the brightest things in Baudelaire are anything else but gay.