<br><br><em>When fishes flew and forests walked</em>
<em>And figs grew upon thorn,</em>
<em>Some moment when the moon was blood</em>
<em>Then surely I was born.</em>
<br>
<em>With monstrous head and sickening cry</em>
<em>And ears like errant wings,</em>
<em>The devil’s walking parody</em>
<em>On all four-footed things.</em>
<br>
<em>The tattered outlaw of the earth,</em>
<em>Of ancient crooked will;</em>
<em>Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,</em>
<em>I keep my secret still.</em>
<br>
<em>Fools! For I also had my hour;</em>
<em> One far fierce hour and sweet:</em>
<em>There was a shout about my ears,</em>
<em>And palms before my feet.</em>
<br>
GK Chesterton wrote hundreds of poems such as "The Donkey", his reflection on the unsung hero of Palm Sunday.
He also wrote thousands of articles – including writing for the <em>Catholic Herald</em> – a few plays and over one hundred books, <a href="https://www.catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">notes</mark></a> the Catholic G.K. Chesterton Society. <br><br>His extensive knowledge of the Bible is made abundantly clear by reading much of his literary output where he is dealing directly with a religious subject.<br><br>In his book <em>A Golden Key Chain</em>, Peter J. Floriani has collected over 300 Biblical verses used by Chesterton, alongside his connected writings. About Palm Sunday, Chesterton chose this Biblical passage to parse:<br><br>"And the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, saying: Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest" (Mt 21:9) – and about which Chesterton had this to say: <br><br>"There has never been a case in which the democracy was wrong when the aristocracy was not wrong too. There was a somewhat famous occasion when the democracy was very wrong indeed; when the mob cried first 'Hoasanna!' and then cried 'Crucify!' [Mt 27:22-23]. <br><br>"But in that instance, again, there was not a shade of difference between the mob and the great rulers and scholars, the learned scribes and the world-travelled warriors, the sublime priest of Jehovah and the master of the eagles of Rome. <br><br>"Or, rather, there was a difference. The difference is that the princes and priests had never cried 'Hosanna!' at all."<br><br>How so little changes across the aeons.
<em>Photo: 'Jesus’s final entry into Jerusalem', by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1897).</em>
