Political Poetry.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7062, 7 February 1893, Page 3

Political Poetry.

What a powerful agent, says a Home paper, is a great song for embodying the national feelings and inspiring the national heart. The Germans went to battle in 1870 with the “ Wacht am Rhein ” on their lips and in their hearts. The Northern troops in the American Oivil War marched to the strains of “ John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the grave,” while the doutherners found in “ My Maryland ” an enkindling power. The way of Daniel O’Connell was prepared by the national poems of Moore, as the later Young Ireland movement derived force and vigour from the poetry of Thomas Davis. Political poetry was condemned by Gbethe because it merely embodied the sentiments of a party, and was tberefora destitute of that universality which appeals to all. And yet he admits that a vigorous political poetry, like that, e.g., of Beranger, is to be justified on his own ground, because it does stir men's passion profoundly and worthy, and does oppose itself to what ought to be op* posed. An even bettor case is that of Burns, for he is identified with no party or sect. Burns cannot be said to have written political poetry in any bard technical sense, in the sense of the Anti-Jacobin, or in the better and wider sense ofWhittier and Lowell in the anti-slavery struggle. And yet Burns gave a propelling power to the great Democratic movement such as all the statesmen and orators and agitators put together could nob achieve. In “ A man’s a man for a’ that,” he has embodied the Democratic spirit in such a way as to impress even those who care naught for Democracy and its works. He makes aristocracy and caste appear vulgar and contemptible, and yet conveys the impression without sinking into the partisan.