Chesterton poem on Football

G. K. Chesterton visited Notre Dame in October, 1930, as a guest lecturer. He was invited to give a series of lectures in Victorian literature, but he also attended the solemn dedication of the stadium and the Notre Dame - Navy game, in which the Irish defeated Navy 26-2.  Chesterton composed a poem marking the occasion.  The Notre Dame football team may not have had a good season for several years, but how many football teams have inspired such poetry?  (I read an excerpt of the poem in an article by Dale Ahlquist in the most recent Notre Dame magazine. The full poem was found here.)

The Arena
Causa Nostrae Laetitiae

(Dedicated to the University of Notre Dame, Indiana)

           There uprose a golden giant
           On the gilded house of Nero
Even his far-flung flaming shadow and his image swollen large
           Looking down on the dry whirlpool
           Of the round Arena spinning
As a chariot-wheel goes spinning; and the chariots at the charge.

              And the molten monstrous visage
              Saw the pageants, saw the torments,
Down the golden dust undazzled saw the gladiators go,
               Heard the cry in the closed desert
               Te salutant morituri,
As the slaves of doom went stumbling, shuddering, to the shades below.

                                    “Lord of Life, of lyres and laughter,
                                      Those about to die salute thee,
           At thy godlike fancy feeding men with bread and beasts with men,
                                    But for us the Fates point deathward
                                     In a thousand thumbs thrust downward,
           And the Dog of Hell is roaring through the lions in their den."

  I have seen, where a strange country
Opened its secret plains about me,
One great golden dome stand lonely with its golden image, one
  Seen afar, in strange fulfillment,
     Through the sunlit Indian summer
That Apocalyptic portent that has clothed her with the Sun.

             She too looks on the Arena
             Sees the gladiators grapple,
     She whose names are Seven Sorrows and the Cause of All Our Joy,
                     Sees the pit that stank with slaughter
                     Scoured to make the courts of morning
For the cheers of jesting kindred and the scampering of a boy.

                          “Queen of Death and deadly weeping
                            Those about to live salute thee,
               Youth untroubled; youth untutored; hateless war and harmless mirth
                              And the New Lord's larger largesse
                              Holier bread and happier circus,
                 Since the Queen of Sevenfold Sorrow has brought joy upon the earth.”

            Burns above the broad arena
            Where the whirling centuries circle,
Burns the Sun-clothed on the summit, golden-sheeted, golden shod,
            Like a sun-burst on the mountains,
            Like the flames upon the forest
Of the sunbeams of the sword-blades of the Gladiators of God.

                          And I saw them shock the whirlwind
                          Of the World of dust and dazzle:
      And thrice they stamped, a thunderclap; and thrice the sand-wheel swirled;
                          And thrice they cried like thunder
                          On Our Lady of the Victories,
      The Mother of the Master of the Masterers of the World.

                                  “Queen of Death and Life undying
                                   Those about to live salute thee;
                   Not the crawlers with the cattle; looking deathward with the swine,
                                    But the shout upon the mountains
                                    Of the men that live for ever
                   Who are free of all things living but a Child; and He was thine.”

--G.K. Chesterton (1930)