by Chesterton · Cluster: Grief and Loss · Elegy · Clothing and Costume
Abstract
An 1898 elegiac tribute on Gladstone’s death, celebrating a strong man who died with his head high and rebuking the grey, sad spirit of the decadent younger generation.
Testo / Text
Connections
Archetypes: Death Personified (2), Hero
Topoi: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
Characters: Death Personified, Gladstone
Motifs: Dawn, Seasons, Cross, Flags and Banners, Crown, Death Themes & Concepts: Grief and Loss, Mortality, Heroism, Honour, Melancholy, Nationalism and Patriotism, Decadence and Aestheticism Forms & Genres: Elegy, Lyric, Dirge Historical References: Regency Georgian England
Testo integrale / Full text
The following was printed in a collection of tributes to W E Gladstone
following his death in May 1898. It was edited by Samuel Jacob and
Chas F Forshaw and Published by Elliot Stock 62 Paternoster Row London.
G. K. Chesterton’s tribute was printed in The Speaker and is as follows;
Lift up your heads; in life, in death,
God knoweth his head was high;
Quit we the coward’s broken breath,
Who watched a strong man die.
If ye must say “No more his peer
Cometh: the flag is furled,“
Stand not too near him; lest we hear
That slander on the world
The good green earth he loved and trod
Is still, with many a scar,
Writ in the chronicles of God
A giant-bearing star.
He fell: but Britain’s banner swings
Above his sunken crown;
Black Death shall have his toil of kings
Before the cross goes down.
O young ones of a darker day,
In Art’s wan colours clad,
Whose very love and hate are grey,
Whose very sin is sad,
Pass on: one agony long-drawn
Was merrier than your mirth;
When hand in hand came death and dawn
And spring was on the earth.