right-and-wrong
by Chesterton · Cluster: Wine and Drink · Ballad Ballade · Road
Abstract
A comic drinking-song contrasting honest wine with cowardly cocoa and teetotal ‘windy waters’; a satirical celebration of conviviality and the moral seriousness of drink.
Testo / Text
Connections
Historical References: Puritanism
Settings: Orient
Motifs: Wine and Drink, Poison Themes & Concepts: Joy, Satire of Society, Honour, Critique of Progress, Nationalism and Patriotism, Temperance and Teetotalism Forms & Genres: Comic Verse Song, Satire
Testo integrale / Full text
The Song of Right and Wrong
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Feast on wine or fast on water
And your honour shall stand sure,
God Almighty's son and daughter
He the valiant, she the pure;
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind attentions,
Go and pour them down the sink.
Tea is like the East he grows in,
A great yellow Mandarin
With urbanity of manner
And unconsciousness of sin;
All the women, like a harem,
At his pig-tail troop along;
And, like all the East he grows in,
He is Poison when he's strong.
Tea, although an Oriental,
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast,
Cocoa is a dull, disloyal,
Lying, crawling cad and clown,
And may very well be grateful
To the fool that takes him down.
As for all the windy waters,
They were rained like tempests down
When good drink had been dishonoured
By the tipplers of the town;
When red wine had brought red ruin
And the death-dance of our times,
Heaven sent us Soda Water
As a torment for our crimes.
- G.K. Chesterton