Share:
  Guess poet | Poets | Poets timeline | Isles | Contacts

Hilaire Belloc [1870-1953] ENG
Ranked #83 in the top 380 poets
Votes 79%: 423 up, 114 down

Comic verses for children and religious poetry. Humorous poems with an implausible moral. 

Orator, sailor, satirist, man of letters, soldier and political activist.

Joseph Hilaire Pierre Rene` Belloc was born in 1870 in a village a few miles from Paris a few days before the start of the Franco-Prussian war. Because of the war, he and his sister were taken to England and when the family returned to their home at the end of the war, they found it utterly vandalised by the occupying German troops. This in some measure, explains his life-long hostility to all things German.He returned to England and was educated at the Oratory School Birmingham, under Cardinal Newman, and later at Balliol College, Oxford, but before Balliol he went back to France to honour what he saw as an obligation to do his military service there, though he was not legally required to. His experience in the artillery influenced him strongly and, like another of his great loves, the sea, never seems far from his mind in his writings.

At Oxford, Belloc was famed both for brilliance in debate and high energy. He became President of the Oxford Union, but, probably because of his decided, and not always, fashionable views, failed to be elected a don after graduating, and this remained a permanent disappointment and a grievance for him. His first book was a small volume of verse, published in 1896, and from then on a torrent of books, pamphlets, letters etc. poured from his pen. It astonishes, not only in its bulk but in its diversity; French and British history, military strategy, satire, comic and serious verse, literary criticism, topography and travel, translations, religious, social and political commentary, long-running controversies with such opponents as H.G. wells and Dr. G.G. Coulton, and hundreds of essays, fill over one hundred and fifty volumes. It is little wonder that A.P. Herbert described him as "the man who wrote a library".

In 1905 he stood for Parliament in the Liberal interest for a seat, South Salford, which had never returned a Liberal. His chances seemed minimal, the more so because of his Catholicism for the electors were solidly non- conformist, and his agent warned him at all costs to avoid any mention of religion.

At his first meeting, however, Belloc announced his faith, held up his rosary, and told the audience that as far as possible he attended the Sacrifice of the Mass daily. The good people of Salford not only elected him but at the next election, when he stood as an Independent, they elected him again. Soon, however, thoroughly disillusioned with the Party system, he left the House of Commons for ever.

During the 1914-18 war he added greatly to his already huge work-load by his immensely detailed and authoritative war commentaries, each week filling much of the journal Land and Water which was dedicated to news of the war. The Times paid high tribute to Belloc`s amazing powers in the field, drawing attention to his article in London Magazine, over 2 and a half years before the start of the war "in which he predicted, with the most extraordinary accuracy, the proceedings of the Germans at Liege as they have happened at the opening of the present war". The Times described this as "one of the most astonishingly accurate prophecies of a great war in the history of journalism."

In that war, Belloc lost his son, Louis; then another son, Peter, died on active service in the war of 1939-46, so Belloc would certainly have recalled the saying of Herodotus that "In peace sons bury their fathers; in war fathers bury their sons". It was after that third great loss in 1940 (his wife, Elodie, had died in 1910) that his health began to fail. He suffered a stroke, and although he lived until 1953, wrote virtually no more.

Both during his lifetime and since, Belloc`s refusal to tone down his views, and his contempt for the political, literary and social establishments of the day, militated against recognition of him as a major writer and thinker. Nor was he helped by the range of his work; critics like to pigeon-hole a writer as poet, historian, playwright, or novelist, and they could not cope with his diversity, huge output, and his overwhelming ebullience. They resented him. even today, that fear and resentment is to be seen in the dismissive little articles and reviews, but slowly the truth is emerging that Hilaire Belloc is among the great writers of English prose and that the best of his verse is of equally high quality. More importantly, he was a thinker of power, significance and - how rare these days - integrity. Where are the people today who would sacrifice the material rewards of public life and office as did Belloc when he demanded, in Parliament in 1908 and repeatedly thereafter, that the funds of political parties should be subject to audit? 

Hilaire Belloc was a big, turbulent and complicated man, and no subject for hagiography. There can be valid and constructive criticisms of his work, and our aim is merely to lessen some of the inherited and uninformed prejudice so as to secure for him a calm and fair hearing.

( An unsigned biographical essay, courtesy of the Alliance of Literary Societies.)

Children, Christian, Humour

YearsCountryPoetInteraction
1874-1936
ENG
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
← collaborated by Hilaire Belloc


WorkLangRating
Matilda Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death
eng
33
The Early Morning
eng
31
Rebecca Who Slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably
eng
24
Jim
eng
22
Tarantella
eng
11
Cautionary Tales for Children: Introduction
eng
3
Henry King,{ Who chewed bits of String, and was cut off in Dreadful Agonies}
eng
3
Lines For A Christmas Card
eng
3
Lines to a Don
eng
3
Time Cures All
eng
3
Algernon
eng
2
An Author’s Hope
eng
2
Courtesy
eng
2
Epitah on the Politician Himself
eng
2
Franklin Hyde
eng
2
George, Who played with a Dangerous Toy, and suffered a Catastrophe of considerable
eng
2
Juliet
eng
2
September
eng
2
The Microbe
eng
2
The Statue
eng
2
A Trinity
eng
1
Charles Augustus Fortescue, Who always Did what was Right, and so accumulated an Immense Fortune.
eng
1
Drinking Song, On the Excellence of Burgundy Wine
eng
1
From: Dedicatory Ode
eng
1
Habitations
eng
1
Ha`nacker Mill
eng
1
Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine
eng
1
Introduction
eng
1
Lord Lundy, Who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and thereby ruined his Political Career
eng
1
On the Little God
eng
1
On Torture: A Public Singer
eng
1
On Vital Statistics
eng
1
The Big Baboon
eng
1
The Crocodile
eng
1
The Face
eng
1
The Frog
eng
1
The Lion
eng
1
The Rebel
eng
1
The South Country
eng
1
The Tiger
eng
1
To The Balliol Men Still In Africa
eng
1
A Moral Alphabet (excerpt)
eng
0
And Is It True
eng
0
April
eng
0
August
eng
0
Ballade Of Modest Confession
eng
0
Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa
eng
0
Because My Faltering Feet
eng
0
Criterion
eng
0
Cuckoo!
eng
0
December
eng
0
Epitaph on the Favourite Dog of a Politician
eng
0
Fatigue
eng
0
February
eng
0
Godolphin Horne,Who was cursed with the Sin of Pride, and Became a Boot-Black.
eng
0
Her Final Role
eng
0
Heretics All
eng
0
Hildebrand, Who was frightened by a Passing Motor, and was brought to Reason.
eng
0
Is there any reward?
eng
0
January
eng
0
July
eng
0
June
eng
0
King`s Land
eng
0
Lord Finchley
eng
0
Lord Lundy II - Second Canto
eng
0
March
eng
0
May
eng
0
Noel
eng
0
November
eng
0
October
eng
0
On The Gift Of A Book To A Child
eng
0
On the Ladies of Pixton
eng
0
On Two Ministers of State
eng
0
Sarah Byng, Who Could Not Read And Was Tossed Into A Thorny Hedge By A Bull
eng
0
Song
eng
0
Talking (and Singing) of the Nordic Man
eng
0
The Birds
eng
0
The Bison
eng
0
The Catholic Sun
eng
0
The Death and Last Confession of Wandering Peter
eng
0
The Diamond
eng
0
The Dromedary
eng
0
The Elephant
eng
0
The Elm
eng
0
The Evenlode
eng
0
The False Heart
eng
0
The Fragment
eng
0
The Gnu
eng
0
The Hippopotamus
eng
0
The Llama
eng
0
The Loser
eng
0
The Marmozet
eng
0
The Mirror
eng
0
The Night
eng
0
The Pacifist
eng
0
The Pelagian Drinking Song
eng
0
The Scorpion
eng
0
The Telephone
eng
0
The Vulture
eng
0
The Whale
eng
0
The Yak
eng
0
To A Rhinoceros
eng
0

The script ran 0.005 seconds.