Poetry and Politics.

Evening Star, Issue 7301, 27 August 1887, Page 5 (Supplement)

Poetry and Politics.

There is (remarks an English paper) one pleasant thing in the ' Fortnightly'—Mr Mathew Arnold's lament over his dog Kaiser. It is pretty and pathetic, with one or two of the master touches which Mr Arnold himself has educated us to discover in other poets, but it is marred by one senseless— wehad almost said silly—political reference: — Six years ago I brought hira down, A baby dog, from Loudon town; Round his small throat of black and brown A ribbon blue, And vouch'd by glorious renown A daclishound true. His mother, most majestic dame, Of blood unmix'd, fiorn Votsdam came; And Kaiser's race wc diem'd the sameNo lineage higher. And so he bore the imperial name. IJufc all, his biie ! Scon, soon, the days conviction bring. The collie hair, the collie swing, The tail's indomitable ring, The eye's unrest The case was clear : a mongrel thing ICai stoad onfest. But all those virtues, which commend The humbler sort who scive and tend. Were thine in store, thou faithful friend. What sense, what cheer ! To us, declining tow'rds our end,

A mate how dear! The disfigurement is a line about the uristocratie dog Max, who began To ilig, and foci his narrow span. And c>>!d, be»i :ct<, his blue blood ran, 'gainst the classes, Ho heard, of iate, the Grand Old Man Incite the masses. It will give really a sad shock to many people who have kept a special place in their hearts for Mathew Arnold as a poet, in spite of anything they may have come to think of Mathew Arnold as a politician, to see him thus descend to the style and the subject of the political squib.