Asimov's Monkey & Chesterton's Lepanto

Looking back through my posts, I've noticed several references to G K Chesterton. He is unusual among my favourite poets in that he was introduced to me by Isaac Asimov's monkey. This obscure reference is of course calculated to make the insanely curious go down googling at the mouth, while the irritable curse my name-dropping habit and the irascible resolve not to come here again. Well, now that we're rid of those kinds for the moment, let's take a look at Chesterton.

As in my last post, let me introduce the poet through the medium of his own poetry. My favourite of all Chesterton's poems must be Lepanto, a short but amazingly epic poem about that great naval battle in 1571 which balked Islamic military ambition and barred the gates of Europe for another 400 years.

Lepanto begins as if through the eye of an alarmed angel:

White founts falling in the Courts of the Sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the Inmost Sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the White Republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

It rings profound changes through the mobilisation of all the armies of the earth and of the unseen realm, where the great voice of Mahound proclaims, "We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun/Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done," while his weak and divided enemies mourn, "Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room/And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom."

At the end, the lions of St Mark triumph over their mighty enemies, and after the tumult of war we see the genesis of a uniquely modern classic of satirical fantasy:

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade...
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

I continue to realise that the literature of my youth was a priceless gift. It was almost thirty years ago, now, that I first came to read, love and memorise Lepanto. Since then, I have seen how the past symbols of a long and turbulent history have sharpened the points of weapons wielded in this age of ours. I am reminded of Dante's vision, that as we are plunged into a tour of Hell, it will be a poet who leads us safely through, and outward, upward into the light.