G. K. Chesterton's "A Child of the Snows"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2023

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

G. K. Chesterton was one of the dominating figures of the London literary scene in the early 20th century. Not only did he get into lively discussions with anyone who would debate him, including his friend, frequent verbal sparring partner, and noted Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, but he wrote about seemingly every topic, in every genre, from journalism to plays, poetry to crime novels. "He said something about everything and he said it better than anyone else," writes Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chester Society. Most of Chesterton's literary output was nonfiction, including thousands of columns for various periodicals, but today he is best remembered for his fictional work—a mystery series about Father Brown, a Catholic priest and amateur detective.

Chesterton's first published books were of poetry. Ian Boyd points to a "close connection between his poetry and his everyday journalism," concluding: "In this sense, T.S. Eliot's description of Chesterton's poetry as 'first-rate journalistic balladry' turns out to have been particularly perceptive, since it is a reminder about the essential character of all Chesterton's work. In his verse, as in all his writings, his first aim was to comment on the political and social questions of the day."

-bio via Poetry Foundation

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem, the podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.9	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, December 18th, 2003.
0:11.2	Today's poem is by the inimitable G.K. Chesterton, and it's called A Child of the Snow's.
0:19.0	I'll read it once. Say this or that, and then read it one more time. A Child of the Snow's. I'll read it once, say this or that, and then read it one more time.
0:23.7	A Child of the Snows. There was heard a hymn when the pains are dim and never before or again
0:31.9	when the nights are strong with the darkness long and the dark is alive with rain.
0:42.7	Never we know, but in sleet and in snow, the place where the great fires are,
0:47.6	that the midst of the earth is a raging mirth and the heart of the earth is a star.
0:52.7	And at night we win to the ancient inn where the child in the frost is furled.
0:55.9	We follow the feet where all souls meet at the inn at the end of the world. The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red, the flame of the sun
1:02.2	is flown. The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold, and a child comes forth alone.
1:23.8	G.K. Chesterton, that great Victorian holdover into the 20th century,
1:31.3	I was a very big fan, and I don't just mean physically, but he was a very tall and very rotund fellow, but he was a very big fan of Charles Dickens.
1:36.0	And there was a line in Dickens' Christmas Carol that always puzzled him.
1:42.2	There was a reference to a story that Bob Cratchett tells around Christmas time
1:47.6	of a child of the snows.
1:51.3	And for many years, Chesterton hunted for the source of this reference,
1:57.9	thinking that it was an allusion to something real.
2:00.4	He finally concluded
2:01.8	that Dickens had invented the idea and the phrase because he never did find anything that
2:09.1	Dickens might be referring to. And he was a pretty clever fellow and prodigious reader.
2:15.1	So if Chesterton gave up, there was probably nothing to find.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -468 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Goldberry Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Goldberry Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.