Latest / The Daily Poem / G. K. Chesterton’s “The Secret People”

Transcript

G. K. Chesterton’s “The Secret People” · The Daily Poem

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, June 27th, 2025.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by G.K.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Chesterton, and it's called The Secret People.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to this episode on the day it releases,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: then that means I am still in the UK,
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: along with the other hosts of the Close Reads podcast.
• 0:28
  And with any luck,
• 0:29
  I am currently on board a train traveling south from Scotland
• 0:33
  toward London.
• 0:34
  I chose this poem then because it would be in keeping with the
• 0:38
  theme of the general moment.
• 0:40
  It is Chesterton's Hymn to the Yeoman,
• 0:43
  a celebration of the English everyman.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's fairly long.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'll read it just once, and I'm fairly certain it can speak for itself.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So here is The Secret People.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Smile at us.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Pay us.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Pass us.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: But do not quite forget.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: For we are the people of England that never have spoken yet.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: There is hunger in our bellies.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: There is laughter in our eyes.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: You laugh at us and love us.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Both mugs and eyes are wet.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Only you do not know us, for we have not spoken yet.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: The blood ran red to Bosworth, and the high French lords went down.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the eyes of the king's servants turned terribly every way,
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: and the gold of the king's servants rose higher every day.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: They burnt the homes of the shaven men that had been quaint and kind,
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: till there was no bed in a monk's house nor food that man could find.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: The ends of God were no man paid, that were the wall of the weak.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: The king's servants ate them all, and still we did not speak.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: and the face of the king's servants grew greater than the king.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: He tricked them, and they trapped him and stood around him in a ring.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: The new grave lords closed round him that had eaten the abbey's fruits,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: and the men of the new religion with their Bibles in their boots.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: We saw their shoulders moving to menace or disgust,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: and some were pure and some were vile,
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: but none took heed of us.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: We saw the king as they killed him,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: and his face was proud and pale,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: and a few men talked of freedom while England talked of ale.
• 2:37
  a war that we understood not came over the world and awoke
• 2:41
  americans frenchmen
• 2:43
  irish but we knew not the things they spoke they talked about
• 2:47
  rights and nature and
• 2:48
  peace and the people's reign and the squires our masters bade
• 2:52
  us fight and scorned
• 2:53
  us never again weak if we be forever could none condemn us then
• 2:58
  men called us serfs
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: and drudges men knew that we were men
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: in foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Abwera Plains.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: We did and died like lions to keep ourselves in chains.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: We lay in living ruins,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: firing and fearing not the strange,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought,
• 3:21
  and the man who seemed to be more than a man we strained
• 3:24
  against and broke.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we broke our own rights with him, and still we never spoke.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Our patch of glory ended.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: We never heard guns again.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the squire seemed struck in the saddle.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was foolish, as if in pain.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: He leaned on a staggering lawyer.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: He clutched a cringing Jew.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was stricken.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: It may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.
• 3:45
  Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men whose spoil is in his
• 3:48
  house come back in
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: shining shapes at last to spoil his last corrals.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: We only know the last sad squires rode slowly towards the sea,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: and a new people takes the land,
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: and still it is not we.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Lords without anger or honor who dare not carry their swords.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: They fight by shuffling papers.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: They have bright dead alien eyes.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: They look at our labor and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Their doors are shut in the evening and they know no songs.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: We hear men speaking for us of new laws, strong and sweet.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchman rose the first.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Our wrath come after Russia's wrath, and our wrath be the worst.
• 4:45
  It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest God's
• 4:49
  scorn for all men governing.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: It may be beer is best.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But we are the people of England, and we have not spoken yet.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Smile at us, pay us, pass us, but do not quite forget.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back next week with more poetry for you.
• 5:14
  Till then,
• 5:15
  find us at dailypoempod.substack.com to listen,
• 5:19
  subscribe,
• 5:20
  and support the show.
• 5:21
  And for all of us at Goldberry Studios,
• 5:23
  I'm Sean Johnson,
• 5:24
  wishing you happy reading.