oak
by Chesterton · Cluster: Essay · Critique of Progress · Common Man
Abstract
A ballad-song contrasting the enduring sacred oak with the parasitic Lord Ivywood who rots the tree; an anti-industrial, distributist allegory of rootedness vs. destructive modernity.
Testo / Text
Connections
Historical References: Napoleonic Wars the Navy, English Civil War, Druidic Paganism
Settings: Rural England
Characters: Lord Ivywood, King Charles II, Collingwood
Motifs: Nature, Blood, Seed and Germination, Decay, Sea, Ship, Concealment Hidden Identity, Sea and Voyage Themes & Concepts: Anti-Industrialism, Distributism, Critique of Progress, Nature vs Civilization, Natural Order, Regeneration, Kingship and Legitimacy, Paganism and Classical Revival, Power and Corruption, Economics, History Forms & Genres: Ballad Ballade, Allegory, Comic Verse Song
Testo integrale / Full text
The Song of the Oak
The Druids waved their golden knives
And danced around the Oak
WHen they had sacrificed a man;
But though the learned search and scan
No single modern person can
Entirely see the joke.
But though they cut the throats of men
They cut not down the tree,
And from the blood the saplings spring
Of oak-woods yet to be.
But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,
He rots the tree as ivy would,
He clings and crawls as ivy would
About the sacred tree.
King Charles he fled from Worcester fight
And hid him in the Oak;
In convent schools no man of tact
Would trace and praise his every act,
Or argue that he was in fact
A strict and sainted bloke.
But not by him the sacred woods
Have lost their fancies free,
And though he was extremely big
He did not break the tree.
But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,
He breaks the tree as ivy would,
And eats the woods as ivy would
Between us and the sea.
Great Collingwood walked down the glade
And flung the acorns free,
That oaks might still be in the grove
As oaken as the beams above,
When the great Lover sailors love
Was kissed by Death at aea.
But though for him the oak-trees fell
To build the oaken ships,
The woodman worshipped what he smote
And honoured even the chips.
But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,
He hates the tree as ivy would,
As the dragon of the ivy would
That has us in his grips.
G. K. Chesterton