ascetic
by Chesterton · Cluster: Wine and Drink · Ballad Ballade · Road
Abstract
A satirical ballad contrasting a full-blooded pagan’s joy in wine, love and war with the joyless, life-denying modern ‘Heathen’ Higgins; defends faith-grounded delight against a sterile secular asceticism.
Testo / Text
Connections
Topoi: War as Glory
Characters: Higgins
Motifs: Wine and Drink, Fire, Death, Money and Gold Themes & Concepts: Joy, Faith, Spiritual Emptiness, Critique of Progress, Satire of Society, Self-Denial and Renunciation, Money and Avarice, Poverty, Economics Forms & Genres: Ballad Ballade, Satire Historical References: Classical Antiquity
Testo integrale / Full text
THE SONG OF THE STRANGE ASCETIC
If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have praised the purple vine,
My slaves should dig the vineyards,
And I would drink the wine.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And his slaves grow lean and grey,
That he may drink some tepid milk
Exactly twice a day.
If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have crowned Neaera’s curls,
And filled my life with love affairs,
My house with dancing girls;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And to lecture rooms is forced,
Where his aunts, who are not married,
Demand to be divorced.
If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have sent my armies forth,
And dragged behind my chariots
The Chieftains of the North.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And he drives the dreary quill,
To lend the poor that funny cash
That makes them poorer still.
If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have piled my pyre on high,
And in a great red whirlwind
Gone roaring to the sky;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And a richer man than I:
And they put him in an oven,
Just as if he were a pie.
Now who that runs can read it,
The riddle that I write,
Of why this poor old sinner,
Should sin without delight-
But I, I cannot read it
(Although I run and run),
Of them that do not have the faith,
And will not have the fun.
(G. K. Chesterton - 1913)