02/07/2024 0 Comments
Poetry Blog No 17
Poetry Blog No 17
# Poetry Group
Poetry Blog No 17
POETRY BLOG 17
The Rolling English Road
The Drunken Reveller by Thomas Bewick 1818
Written by G K Chesterton in 1913, The Rolling English Road is one of his most famous poems. It was originally published as ‘A Song of Temperance Reform” as a political statement by Chesterton against the threatened introduction of Prohibition into Britain. It was intended to oppose the influence of the Temperance Movement in the UK.
He followed this up with a novel called the Flying Inn, which was published the following year on the same theme of prohibition and temperance!
But the poem does make us look at both sides of the coin; for at one level, it supports or defends the drinking of alcohol in a very genial way, but, on another level, it still warns of the dangers.
Chesterton was a prolific writer of novels, poems and essays and famously wrote Father Brown, which I believe has just returned to the TV screens. He was a Christian apologist mostly at the high Anglican and later Roman Catholic end of the spectrum.
I first encountered this poem in a very public way in the mid 1970’s when I read it in Chipping Warden Church, when we presented “An Evening of Poetry Prose and Song”, and it remains a favourite of mine.
The lines are quite long (Heptameters or informally “fourteeners” as the lines had 14 syllables) , which could have made them cumbersome to read, but somehow Chesterton has made them flow rather easily much like a rolling road described by the drunken meanderings of the English Drunkard. And this stretches to the time before the Romans came and gave us straight roads, across a pan of history to the 19th century (note the mention of Napoleon)
And there is lots of alliteration which helps in the reading and give the impression of a drunkard – a reeling road and rolling road that rambles round the shire ,for example .
And there is the absurdity of long and tortuous journeys like going from Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. Each verse ends with a famous terminus - until the last one.
Beachy Head is a beauty spot on remote chalk cliffs overlooking the English Channel, the Goodwin Sands is a sandbank in the North Sea, and Brighton Pier is a popular seaside attraction extending out to sea, built just a few years before the poem was written.
Kensal Green, however, is a graveyard and perhaps could be seen as that transit point --- should there be a world beyond this one.
But whilst he seems to be almost praising the habit of getting drunk the real message lies in the last line. This is serious stuff!! This takes us from third person to first person and is cautionary.
Kensal Green was, and indeed is, an affluent part of NW London. Kensal Green is a famous Cemetery where many notable people are buried so there is the serious suggestion that too much drink will finish you off even if you do make it to Paradise. So perhaps we really ought to ease off imbibing in too much alcohol.
Interestingly there is a pub/restaurant in Kensal Green, very aptly named: “Paradise by way of Kensal Green” which is located right next to the cemetery. The cemetery buildings are in the neo-classical style, of a similar date to our church, and all chapels are Grade 1 or Grade 2 listed.
The Rolling English Road *
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
To add some flavour to the poem I have provided links to two versions available on YouTube. One of them is spoken and one sung. Since Chesterton originally called it call it “ A Song of Temperance Reform, a sung version, in a folk style seems very appropriate.!
So first of all, a modern young English Poet, Arthur L Wood, reads the GK Chesterton Classic.
He has just published a collection of his own poems called “ Poems for Susan”
Secondly Maddy Prior sings G. K. Chesterton's "The Rolling English Road" from her 1997 Album “ Flesh and Blood.
I hope you enjoy reading it yourselves and also listening to these audio versions.
* The New Oxford Book of English Verse, Chosen & Edited by Helen Gardner, OUP Oxford 1972/ Reprint 1987
Submitted by Roger Verrall - 8 May 2021
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