Explore "Sonnet with the Compliments of the Season" by G.K. Chesterton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
TO A POPULAR LEADER MUCH TO BE CONGRATULATED / ON THE AVOIDANCE OF A STRIKE AT CHRISTMAS.
I know you. You will hail the huge release, / Saying the sheathing of a thousand swords, / In silence and injustice, well accords / With Christmas bells. And you will gild with grease / The papers, the employers, the police, / And vomit up the void your windy words / To your New Christ; who bears no whip of cords / For them that traffic in the doves of peace.
The feast of friends, the candle-fruited tree, / I have not failed to honour. And I say / It would be better for such men as we, / And we be nearer Bethlehem, it we lay / Shot dead on scarlet snows for liberty, / Dead in the daylight upon Christmas Day.