The Cool of the Dawn: Chesterton and the Resurrection
Christianity places as its central claim the dogma that Christ rose from the dead after suffering crucifixion. Paul proclaimed that “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”[1] The 20th-century thinker G. K. Chesterton recognized the importance of that moment when, “in the semblance of a gardener, God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.”[2] His understanding of the Resurrection is central to his poem The Ballad of the White Horse that tells of the 9th-century battle of Alfred, the Christian king of England, against pagan Danish invaders. This battle ultimately stands for the battle of the Church against her enemies throughout history, a battle she is guaranteed to win because she is following “a God who [knows] the way out of the grave.”[3]
The Dedication offers the interpretive key to the entire poem, as Chesterton challenges his reader with a number of questions. Why bother with a battle that took place 1200 years ago? Surely the Battle of Ethandune is in far too distant a past to have any wisdom for today. Chesterton raises these questions, then shatters them, saying,
[B]y one light only
We look from Alfred’s eyes,
We know he saw athwart the wreck
The sign that hangs about your neck,
Where One more than Melchizedek
Is dead and never dies.[4]
In an image reminiscent of the prologue to the Gospel of John, Chesterton claims that the light of Christ connects man throughout the centuries, and that in Him alone resides all truth and wisdom found in literature.
The poem opens by describing a world in the midst of the Dark Ages. Alfred, battling the Danish invasion, “hardened his heart with hope.” [5] His was a human hope, maintained by human effort, a far cry from the theological virtue and completely insufficient for the circumstances. England waged a fruitless war until Alfred nearly gave up, but in this moment of crisis, he was granted a vision of Our Lady. He asked her, not for English victory, but whether they shall go to heaven after the seemingly inevitable slaughter.[6] Her strange answer ended with the words,
I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?[7]
Her use of the word “save,” meaning an exception to otherwise comfortless words, and the reference to threefold night are nonsensical apart from a Scriptural viewpoint. Paul had this viewpoint like none other; consider his extraordinary statement, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?”[8] This would be absurd unless, by some miracle, death did not get the final word. Paul emphasized this point because “[we] denied the Holy and Righteous One . . . and killed the Author of life,” but He rose from the dead to extend reconciliatory love.[9] The rest of the poem covers the unfolding of Alfred’s understanding of this radical truth. He was granted a new way of seeing, and so was willing to be a fool for Christ, to be the person with their feet on earth and their eyes on heaven, and to lead with unshakable faith.
This encounter left Alfred “shaken of the joy of giants, / The joy without a cause.”[10] Given their great height, giants have a higher vision; similarly, Alfred, through the Blessed Mother’s intervention, was seeing from a heavenly perspective. He went to his war-chiefs with the words of Mary, calling them to battle. When he said, “the sky grows darker yet / And the sea rises higher,” the chief Colon replied, “if the sea and sky be foes / We will tame the sea and sky.”[11] Colon was thinking in a human, albeit brash, manner, but Alfred challenged this outlook:
Seek ye a fable
More dizzy and more dread
Than all your mad barbarian tales,
Where the sky stands on its head?
A tale where a man looks down on the sky
That has long looked down on him;
A tale where a man can swallow a sea
That might swallow the seraphim.[12]
Here, Alfred is making the richly Christian claim that ultimately everything will be flipped upside down and all the last will be first.[13]
The chiefs convinced, Alfred was then confronted with the Danes, who came upon him in the wilderness and believed him a troubadour who could entertain their king. He heard the songs of the Danish chiefs, displaying a range of philosophies from hedonism to nihilism.[14] Alfred finally stopped them, saying,
I will answer even the mighty earl
That asked of Wessex men
Why they be meek and monkish folk,
And bow to the White Lord’s broken yoke;
What sign have we save blood and smoke?
Here is my answer then.[15]
He asserted, paradoxically, that the Danes were “more tired of victory” than the English were of defeat:
[T]hough all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.[16]
He concluded by saying that the pagan downfall is certain because
[The] spirit with whom [they] blindly band
Hath blessed destruction with this hand;
But by God’s death the stars shall stand
And the small apples grow.[17]
Here Alfred is saying with Paul, “O death, where is your victory?” The Crucifixion was the darkest day in history, and yet God crafted it into a definitive statement of love, that creation is worth redeeming. Just as star differs from star in glory, so shall it be with the resurrection.[18]
This moment marks a culmination of Alfred’s wisdom that has been developing over the course of the story. He was confronted with the inadequacy of a hope merely human, but learned from the Immaculate Heart, a heart fully conformed to the Kingdom narrative. Through his leadership, the English gathered for one final battle at Ethandune. It cost the lives of Alfred’s chiefs, but just as he was calling his men to stand to the end, Heaven came to the rescue:
One instant in the still light,
He saw Our Lady then,
Her dress was soft as western sky,
And she was a queen most womanly—
But she was a queen of men.
Over the iron forest
He saw Our Lady stand;
Her eyes were sad withouten art,
And seven swords were in her heart—
But one was in her hand.[19]
Significantly, Our Lady of Sorrows, the mother that stood at the Cross, came for the eleventh-hour rescue, for she is the model of entering into darkness trusting in the Lord. Seeing the rout of the Danes, Alfred cried that “the cross goes over the sun and moon,” echoing the sea and sky imagery of Our Lady’s message.[20]
After an extraordinary victory, England flourished, until the news came at the end of Alfred’s life that the Danes had returned. As his people despaired, Alfred encouraged them by speaking of the ultimate battle of light against darkness that continues until the end of time. His unflagging hope lay in the truth that Christ has won the definitive victory when he “broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.”[21]
Now, this is all well and good, but the objection could be raised as to the relevance of this reflection. One’s understanding of this specific work may be broadened, but, beyond that, so what? To that I give two answers. First, what was true in Alfred’s time is true in ours, for “by one light only / We look from Alfred’s eyes.”[22] We also are part of a Church Militant battling evil, but defiant courage and defiant joy are possible through the belief that Christ’s tomb is empty. Secondly, classic literature contains a dialogue with the Gospels, and therefore must be read through a Scriptural lens. Western thought is founded upon Biblical foundations, and literature is no exception. Literature also forms the core of liberal education, for it concretizes universal wisdom in a mode both approachable and profound, touching the heart as well as the intellect. Every great work of literature presents the perennial question of whether man will rise to the challenge of virtue. It indirectly expresses God’s invitation to accept our places in the story that has been prepared since before the foundations of the world. The tension comes from free will: do we accept? If we accept and follow in this way, we can be truly called disciples, and we will know the truth and the truth will make us free.[23]
[1] 1 Corinthians 15:17 (RSVCE).
[2] G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (New York: Image Books, 1955), 217.
[3] Ibid., 255.
[4] G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse (Mineola, Dover Publications, 2010), ix.
[5] Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, 5.
[6] Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, 11.
[7] Ibid., 14.
[8] 1 Corinthians 15:55.
[9] Acts 3:14-15.
[10] Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, 17.
[11] Ibid., 14, 28.
[12] Ibid., 14.
[13] Matthew 19:30.
[14] Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, 35-43.
[15] Ibid., 44.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid., 46-47.
[18] 1 Corinthians 15:41-42.
[19] Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, 107.
[20] Ibid., 109.
[21] “The Exsultet: The Proclamation of Easter,” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, accessed November 7, 2022, https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year-and-calendar/easter/easter-proclamation-exsultet.
[22] Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, ix.
[23] John 8:32.
