The Shopmen, when their souls were still,
Declined to open shops--
And cooks recorded frames of mind,
In sad and subtle chops.
The drawings which accompanied these gems, it may be added, were such as
the verses deserved. They exhibit a joyous inconsistency, the
disproportion which is the essence of parody combined with the accuracy
which is the _sine qua non_ of satire.
About a month after Chesterton had produced his statement of his extreme
senility (the actual words of the affidavit are
I am, I think I have remarked, [he had not],
Terrifically old.)
he published another little book, _The Wild Knight and Other Poems_, as
evidence of his youth. For some years past he had occasionally written
more or less topical verses which appeared in The Outlook and the
defunct Speaker. _Greybeards at Play_ was, after all, merely an
elaborate sneer at the boredom of a decade; the second book was a more
definite attack upon some points of its creeds and an assertion of the
principles which mattered most.
There is one sin: to call a green leaf grey,
Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth.
There is one blasphemy: for death to pray,
For God alone knoweth the praise of death.