Poem of the Day: ‘The Donkey’

For a lighter Wednesday poem, here’s something from G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936). “The Donkey” first appeared in his 1900 volume “The Wild Knight and Other Poems,” and it’s an easy, comic read about a donkey who, Eeyore-like, disparages himself — until the sudden reversal at the end.

In ballad-meter quatrains (four-foot lines alternating with three-foot lines), Chesterton gives us the donkey’s self-image: half Pleistocene monster and half demon, born “when the moon was blood.” And yet, the donkey says, he has a secret that he doesn’t mention — a secret pride and a secret joy, no matter how ill he’s treated. For “One far fierce hour and sweet,” he carried Jesus, and “There was a shout about my ears, / And palms before my feet.”