The Revolutionist: Or Lines to a Statesman
“I was never standing by while a revolution was going on.” ~Speech by the Rt. Hon. Walter Long
by G. K. Chesterton
Feast of St David the Righteous of Thessalonika
Anno Domini 2020, June 26
When death was on thy drums, Democracy,
And with one rush of slaves the world was free,
In that high dawn the Kings shall not forget,
A void there was and Walter was not yet.
Through sacked Versailles, at Valmy in the fray,
They did without him in some kind of way;
Red Christendom all Walterless they cross,
And in their fury hardly feel their loss . . .
Fades the Republic; faint as Roland’s horn,
Her trumpets taunt us with a sacred scorn . . .
Then silence fell: and Mr. Long was born.
From his first hours in his expensive cot
He never saw the tiniest viscount shot.
In deference to his wealthy partents’ whim
The wildest massacres were kept from him.
The wars that dyed Pall Mall and Brompton red
Passed harmless o’er that one unconscious head:
For all that little Long could understand
The rich might still be rulers of the land.
Vain are the pious arts of parenthood,
Foiled Revolution bubbled in his blood;
Until one day (the babe unborn shall rue it)
The Constitution bored him and he slew it.
If I were wise and good and rich and strong—
Fond, impious thought, if I were Walter Long—
If I could water sell like molten gold,
And make grown people do as they are told,
If over private fields and wastes as wide
As a Greek city for which heroes died,
I owned the houses and the men inside—
If all this hung on one thin thread of habit
I would not revolutionize a rabbit.
I would sit tight with all my gifts and glories,
And even preach to unconverted Tories,
That the fixed system that our land inherits,
Viewed from a certain standpoint, has its merits.
I’d guard the laws like any Radical,
And keep each precedent, however small,
However subtle, misty, dusty, dreamy,
Lest man by chance should look at me and see me;
Lest men should ask what madman made me lord
Of English ploughshares and the English sword;
Lest men should mark how sleepy is the nod
That drills the dreadful images of God!
Walter, be wise! avoid the wild and new!
The Constitution is the game for you.
Walter, beware! scorn not the gathering throng,
It suffers, yet it may not suffer wrong,
It suffers, yet it cannot suffer Long.
And if you goad it these grey rules to break,
For a few pence, see that you do not wake
Death and the splendour of the scarlet cap,
Boston and Valmy, Yorktown and Jemmappes,
Freedom in arms, the riding and routing,
The thunder of the captains and the shouting,
All that lost riot that you did not share—
And when that riot comes—you will be there.
*Originally published in Poems
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1926), pp. 90-92.
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