The Sailor's Carol

The Sailor─

"Noël ! Noël ! Noël ! Noël !

A Catholic tale have I to tell !

And a Christian song have I to sing

While all the bells in Arundel ring.

"I pray good beef and I pray good beer

This holy night of all the year,

But I pay detestable drink for them

That give no honour to Bethlehem.

"May all good fellows that here agree

Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me

And may all my enemies go to hell!

Noël ! Noël ! Noël ! Noël !

May all my enemies go to hell !

Noël ! Noël !"

~Hilaire Belloc: from The Four Men: A Farrago

"His remark has no intellectual value"

“WHEN a man tells you that it “stands to reason” that such and such a thing, to which he is unaccustomed, cannot have taken place, his remark has no intellectual value whatever.”

~Hilaire Belloc: Essays of a Catholic.

Poem: December

Hoar Time about the house betakes him slow, 
Seeking an entry for his weariness; 
And in that dreadful company Distress 
And the sad Night with silent footsteps go. 
On my poor fire the brands are scarce aglow, 
And in the woods without what memories press; 
Where, waning in the trees from less to less, 
Mysterious bangs the hornèd moon, and low. 

For now December, full of aged care, 
Comes in upon the yea and weakly grieves, 
Mumbling his lost desires and his despair; 
And with mad trembling hand still interweaves 
The dank sear flower-stalks tangled in his hair, 
While round about him whirl the rotten leaves.

~Hilaire Belloc

Photo: Hilaire Belloc, at his home in King's Land, Shipley, West Sussex.

November

November is that historied Emperor, 
Conquered in age, but foot to foot with fate, 
Who from his refuge high has heard the roar 
Of squadrons in pursuit, and now, too late, 
Stirrups the storm and calls the winds to war, 
And arms the garrison of his last heirloom, 
And shakes the sky to its extremest shore 
With battle against irrevocable doom. 

Till, driven and hurled from his strong citadels, 
He flies in hurrying cloud and spurs him on, 
Empty of lingerings, empty of farewells 
And final benedictions, and is gone. 
But in my garden all the trees have shed 
Their legacies of the light, and all the flowers are dead.

~Hilaire Belloc

A November Night, by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836 - 1893).

"What is the way out of such evils?”

“IT is morally wrong for the Government to swindle people out of their property by making false money. What is the way out, allowing for Economic Law? It is morally wrong that some men should starve while other men have too much: allowing for Economic Law, what is the way out of such evils?”

~Hilaire Belloc: Economics for Helen, Chap. VII.

"Terror, which is a sudden madness and paralysis of the soul"

"I HAVE much to say further on in this book concerning terror: the panic that haunts high places and the spell of many angry men. This horrible affection of the mind is the delight of our modern scribblers; it is half the plot of their insane 'short stories', and is at the root of their worship of what they call 'strength', a cowardly craving for protection, or the much more despicable fascination of brutality. For my part I have always disregarded it as something impure and devilish, unworthy of a Christian. Fear I think, indeed, to be in the nature of things, and it is as much part of my experience to be afraid of the sea or of an untried horse as it is to eat and sleep; but terror, which is a sudden madness and paralysis of the soul, that I say is from hell, and not to be played with or considered or put in pictures or described in stories. All this I say to preface what happened, and especially to point out how terror is in the nature of a possession and is unreasonable."

~Hilaire Belloc: The Path to Rome.

"The controllers of credit"

“TODAY you may say that all society is in debt to those who hold the levers of credit, and that when, or if, we lose our freedom altogether we shall have for masters the remaining controllers of land and machinery, who will have behind them, as ultimate masters, the controllers of credit.”

~Hilaire Belloc: The Way Out.