G.K. Chesterton's "The Donkey"
The Daily Poem
Goldberry Studios
4.6 ā¢ 729 Ratings
šļø 30 March 2021
ā±ļø 6 minutes
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Summary
Gilbert Keith ChestertonĀ KC*SGĀ (29 May 1874Ā ā 14 June 1936) was an English writer,[2]Ā philosopher,Ā lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince ofĀ paradox".[3]Ā Ā TimeĀ magazine observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegoriesāfirst carefully turning them inside out."[4]
Chesterton created the fictional priest-detectiveĀ Father Brown,[5]Ā and wrote onĀ apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works asĀ OrthodoxyĀ andĀ The Everlasting Man.[4][6]Ā Chesterton routinely referred to himself as anĀ "orthodox"Christian, and came to identify this position more and more withĀ Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism fromĀ High ChurchĀ Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors asĀ Matthew Arnold,Ā Thomas Carlyle,Ā John Henry Newman, andĀ John Ruskin.[7] - Bio via Wikipedia
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Tuesday, March 30th, 2021. |
| 0:07.0 | Today's poem is an Easter-themed poem. Sunday was Palm Sunday for most of Christendom, |
| 0:13.2 | most of the Christian world, and this coming Sunday is Easter. So today's poem is a Palm Sunday |
| 0:20.2 | themed poem, and it's by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, |
| 0:24.5 | known more often as G.K. Chesterton. He lived from 1874, May of 1874, until June of 1936. |
| 0:31.9 | He was an English writer. He was a philosopher, a theologian, he was a critic. |
| 0:46.4 | He wrote, perhaps most famously, Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, both kind of works of philosophical, theological philosophy. |
| 0:57.0 | And then also, of course, the fictional detective stories of a priested detective, and those, of course, brown stories but he also wrote a lot of poetry and the poem that i'm going to read today as i said it is palm sunday themed |
| 1:04.1 | and it's called the donkey you may have heard it before it's fairly common around this time of year |
| 1:09.0 | but nonetheless i think it is worth checking out again it's a a good one for kids especially, so if you've got your kids nearby |
| 1:15.1 | and they're not listening, could gather them up for this one. This is how it goes. |
| 1:22.5 | When fishes flew and forests walked and figs grew upon thorn some moment when the moon was blood then surely i was born |
| 1:35.2 | with monstrous head and sickening cry and ears like errant wings the devil's walking |
| 1:42.5 | parody on all four-footed things, |
| 1:45.9 | "'the tattered outlaw of the earth of ancient crooked will. |
| 1:52.3 | "'Starve, scourge, deride me. |
| 1:55.5 | "'I am dumb. I keep my secret still. |
| 2:00.6 | "'Fools, for I also had my hour. One far fierce hour and sweet. |
| 2:11.0 | There was a shout about my ears and palms before my feet. |
| 2:20.6 | So this is a four stanza poem, four quatrains, |
| 2:25.0 | 16 total lines. |
| 2:26.8 | And it has that, you know, |
... |
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