I returned last night from this year’s exhilarating and exhausting Chesterton Conference and am now embarked on trying to catch up with the backlog of correspondence that awaited me upon my return. One of the e-mails that awaited me was this from a friend in Texas, enquiring about the meaning of three of Chesterton’s poems. I’m posting the relevant part of the e-mail here. My response follows:
 

I have some quick GKC Poem questions.

Reply when convenient, no rush. 

Related to 3 poems from his book – Poems

The Last Hero

On Righteous Indignation

The Mortal Answer

 

1.       Over all meaning of The Last Hero?        

a.       What is the historical / geographical context of the struggle? Bergen? They? My lady bride? red-roof hall?

b.      Part of me is not sure I want to know, quite yet, a true historic context while I still am enjoying an immerging spiritual interpretation.

With as Christ the hero and the lady as the church that he rescues and still loves as she resists, falter’s, hates, and frowns  and the “they” as the word, his enemy who he judges, chastens yet still loves. It does not all fit but it does move me as glimpses, even if out of context, of the long suffering loving heart of God, the dying finally victorious in death, heart of Jesus, the last hero. To have the last “laugh”. There is so much there, still to discover – I love it.

 

Or is some how the Lady England and this more a nationalistic origin? Just checking…?

 

2.       On Righteous Indignation and The Mortal Answer

a.       Here I am just inquiring about the line …” A scorner of the stars”. This is the last line in On Righteous Indignation. What is the significance of the stars and why scorn them? Are they related to Angles as some times in the Bible? Or do they hold a different common interpretation in English lit?

b.      Does this relate to the lines in The Mortal Answer –

And the pride of the house of Adam

That holdeth the stars in scorn.

                                Would these be the same stars and held in scorn for the same reason?  

My reply: 

I’m not sure how much enlightenment I can offer with regard to the Chesterton poems. With this in mind, I’m copying my friend, Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society, who is more knowledgeable than I.

 

For what it’s worth, here are my efforts at answering your questions:

 

I do not know the historical context and can only presume (perhaps wrongly) that the reference to Bergen sets the poet and poem in the old days of the Vikings. If this presumption is correct, the poet’s voice is that of Christian hope and defiance in the face of the pessimism of paganism, much as the same voice animates the narrative of “The Ballad of the White Horse”.

 

I don’t believe the Lady of the poem is the Church, nor is she Lady England. The narrative voice is not that of Christ (at least not as I read it) but that of the Christian warrior in the face of the pessimism of paganism. His “lady” is the object of his chivalrous devotion.

 

Regarding the other two poems, the reference to scorning the stars is another example of Christian hope and freedom in the face of the desperate determinism of the pagan. In this context, the stars signify the blindness of immutable fate or fortune, the slavery of mortal man to the heartless whim of the gods. In contrast to the fatalism of the stars, the Christian believes in free will and the benign hand of God’s providence.

 

Perhaps Dale can offer further enlightenment.