Greybeards at Play/Spread

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in All Classes

Impetuously I sprang from bed,

Long before lunch was up,

That I might drain the dizzy dew

From day's first golden cup.

In swift devouring ecstacy

Each toil in turn was done;

I had done lying on the lawn

Three minutes after one.

For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,

The duties shine like stars;

I formed my uncle's character,

Decreasing his cigars.

But could my kind engross me? No!

Stern Art--what sons escape her?

Soon I was drawing Gladstone's nose

On scraps of blotting paper.

Then on--to play one-fingered tunes

Upon my aunt's piano.

In short, I have a headlong soul,

I much resemble Hanno.

(Forgive the entrance of the not

Too cogent Carthaginian.

It may have been to make a rhyme;

I lean to that opinion).

Then my great work of book research

Till dusk I took in hand--

The forming of a final, sound

Opinion on _The Strand_.

But when I quenched the midnight oil,

And closed _The Referee_,

Whose thirty volumes folio

I take to bed with me,

I had a rather funny dream,

Intense, that is, and mystic;

I dreamed that, with one leap and yell,

The world became artistic.

The Shopmen, when their souls were still,

Declined to open shops--

And Cooks recorded frames of mind

In sad and subtle chops.

The stars were weary of routine:

The trees in the plantation

Were growing every fruit at once,

In search of a sensation.

The moon went for a moonlight stroll,

And tried to be a bard,

And gazed enraptured at itself:

I left it trying hard.

The sea had nothing but a mood

Of 'vague ironic gloom,'

With which t'explain its presence in

My upstairs drawing-room.

The sun had read a little book

That struck him with a notion:

He drowned himself and all his fires

Deep in the hissing ocean.

Then all was dark, lawless, and lost:

I heard great devilish wings:

I knew that Art had won, and snapt

The Covenant of Things.

I cried aloud, and I awoke,

New labours in my head.

I set my teeth, and manfully

Began to lie in bed.

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,

So I my life conduct.

Each morning see some task begun,

Each evening see it chucked.

But still, in sudden moods of dusk,

I hear those great weird wings,

Feel vaguely thankful to the vast

Stupidity of things.