History & Politics

For a War Memorial

by G. K. Chesterton 1874–1936

From The Ballad of St. Barbara, and Other Verses (1922)

History & PoliticsSocial Commentaries

The hucksters haggle in the mart
The cars and carts go by;
Senates and schools go droning on;
For dead things cannot die.

A storm stooped on the place of tombs
With bolts to blast and rive;
But these be names of many men
The lightning found alive.

If usurers rule and rights decay
And visions view once more
Great Carthage like a golden shell
Gape hollow on the shore,

Still to the last of crumbling time
Upon this stone be read
How many men of England died
To prove they were not dead.

✦ ✦ ✦

A suggested inscription, 'probably not selected by the Committee', that sets the hucksters' haggling in the mart against the dead of England, who 'died to prove they were not dead'.

MLA

Chesterton, G. K. “For a War Memorial.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/chesterton/53/.

Chicago

Chesterton, G. K. “For a War Memorial.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/chesterton/53/.

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