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.”

The Donkey
by G.K. Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked
   And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
   Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
   And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
   On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
   Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
   I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
   One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
   And palms before my feet.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past, together with the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.