This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells--
Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,
Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.
The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand--
Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?
The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,
And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the brain.
Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;
Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.
We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.
GKC
TMWWT

This is the closing stanza of the Introduction of TMWWT. This is good poetry on its own but it takes on a new dimension when its subject is understood.

Bentley and Chesterton were boyhood friends. Friends in fact to a degree that few of us ever know. As Chesterton reached adulthood he experienced a sense of meaninglessness with his life that he felt suicide was the way out. He was not alone. There as a philosophical fad popular at that time that suicide was a means of achieving ultimate freedom from the shackles of life which had no meaning anyway. The despair which drove Chesterton is the 'hell' he refers to. Evidently Bentley either shared the despair or was a support to Chesterton during this time and so that he, Bentley, is the only one who understood what Chesterton went through. Further, the subtitle of TMWWT - A Nightmare; does not refer to a dream during sleep but a Nightmare of waking despair.

I think the 'pistol flash' reference was to the method of suicide and how Chesterton thought it would have freed him from the nightmare.

It is only at the last 3 verses where the poem changes to optimistic.

Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.

Growing old is a good thing. It is not good to end your life.

How did Chesterton emerge from his despair? What made his life worth living?

We have another paradox. Common things. Not some grand epiphany, or is it.
Dorothy found her happiness in her own backyard, not in the wonderland of Oz.
Chesterton found his in the common thing of a wife. A remarkable woman named Frances who upon meeting him the first time disagreed with everything he said. But she listened to him. Not in the sense of doing what he told her to do; but in listening to 'him'. I think we see an echo of her in the first chapter of TMWWT when Chesterton writes,

The attitude of women in such cases was indeed one of the paradoxes of the place. Most of the women were of the kind vaguely called emancipated, and professed some protest against male supremacy. Yet these new women would always pay to a man the extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, that of listening while he is talking.

Chesterton fell in love with Frances at their first meeting. It was the common thing of marriage and creed which saved him.

Thoughts, comments and disagreements are welcome.