Mr. Chesterton retains his thorough contempt for the scientific man.
O learned man who never learned to Jearn, Save to deduce, by timid steps and From towering smoke that fire can never burn And from tall tales that men were never tall.
And he bids him, in a line of singular beauty, Chase myths like moths, and fight them with a pin.
G. K. C. is at his very best in "The Old Song (On the Embankment in stormy weather)" I saw great Cobbett riding, The horseman of the shires; And his face was red with judgment And a light of Luddite fires And south to Sussex and the sea the lights leapt up for liberty, The trumpet of the yeomanry, the hammer of the squires; For bars of iron rust away, rust away, rust away, Rend before the hammer and the horseman riding in, Crying that all men at the last, and at the worst, and at the last, Have found the place where England ends and England can begin. There is the genuine Chesterton tang, too, in The happy men that lose their heads They find their heads in heaven, As cherub heads with cherub wings, And cherub haloes even.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.