Rediscovering G K Chesterton

As anyone who has read my rabid rambling nonsense since 2005 will know, I'm quite a fan of the writings of Rudyard Kipling. His complete works once helped me keep my sanity during a prolonged and life threatening illness. Yet I feel my literary education is far from complete. Up until recently I had never read the following poem by G K Chesterton, which seems particularly appropriate in light of the political situation in the UK and increasingly throughout all the western nations;

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

Upon reading those words I feel a strangely prescient chill.