View on Biblioguides
For years, I heard about G.K. Chesterton. I read some of his quotes—along with a few that were misattributed to him—and generally felt like he was too smart for me. It wasn’t until about ten years ago that my reading friend and I decided to tackle Chesterton in earnest. And we did. And it changed my life.
We started with In Defense of Sanity, a collection of his essays, reading one per week—usually on Sundays. It turned out to be a wonderful way to ease into the mind of this brilliant but absent-minded “clown of God.”
Somewhere along the way, we wanted to understand him better, so we read Joseph Pearce’s biography Wisdom and Innocence. We took our time, spending about nine months with it, and by the time Hilaire Belloc was crying into his beer at Chesterton’s funeral, we were sobbing too! That biography made me feel as if I had met a dear friend, and my life has been richer for it.
Over the years, we’ve read all kinds of Chesterton. Some things I’ve liked more than others. The man was prolific and wrote in every genre! He loved poetry and even wrote some ballads of his own.
Every year, my Tuesday night book club reads Lepanto aloud. It only takes about fifteen minutes, but each time, I come away with something new.
The thing is, I don’t particularly care for poetry. With the possible exception of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, poetry often feels awkward to me. I don’t like its rhythm or meter, its constraints, or how pregnant it is with symbolism. It’s simply not a comfortable way of entering into a story for me.
I had always heard about the value of The Ballad of the White Horse, but given my feelings about poetry, I wasn’t eager to read it. This year, however, my reading friend and I decided it was time.
At first, I struggled. Every time I picked it up, I just about fell asleep. It had all the elements I dislike about poetry… or so I thought.
Then, out of frustration one day, I tried reading it aloud. I remembered how Wes Callahan of Old Western Culture always says that Homer isn’t meant to be read silently—it’s meant to be heard, like how Shakespeare is meant to be seen. And suddenly, something clicked. Hearing the words, the lyrical quality of the poetry engaged my brain differently. For the first time, I truly entered into the story.
That said, I still felt at a disadvantage. My knowledge of British medieval history is probably better than many Americans, but it was still lacking. I struggled to fully grasp what was happening because I didn’t know the characters or understand the context.
As luck would have it, I was also reading The Lost Dragon of Wessex by Gwendolyn Bowers. When I realized that its Alfred was the same Alfred from The Ballad of the White Horse, I was delighted! While I still need a much better education in this period of English history, that wonderful middle-grade novel helped me enter into the romance of the story.
I still don’t love poetry as a rule. But I’m so glad I finally read The Ballad of the White Horse. And now, with a little more historical knowledge, I wouldn’t mind revisiting it again someday.