From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods there be-- That no life lives for ever, That dead men rise up never, That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. This is insincere, because a pagan (as Swinburne was) could have committed suicide had he really felt these things. Swinburne, like most modern pagans, really hated priestcraft when he thought he was hating God. Chesterton's note is truer. He knows that the pagan has all the good things of life but one, and that only an exceptionally nice pagan knows he lacks that much. And so one might go on mining the _White Horse_, for it contains most things, as a good epic should. Two short stanzas, however, should 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.