ly on principles of right and wrong, then a poet
has as clear a right as any man to speak upon them: as clear a right now
as when Tennyson lifted his voice on behalf of the Fleet, or Wordsworth
penned his 'Two Voices' sonnet, or Milton denounced the massacres at
Piedmont. While this nation retains a conscience, its poets have a clear
right and a clear call to be the voice of that conscience. They may err,
of course; they may mistake the voice of party for the voice of
conscience: 'Jameson's Ride' and 'The Year of Shame'--one or both--may
misread that voice. Judge them as severely as you will by their rightness
or wrongness, and again judge them by their merits or defects as
literature. Only do not forbid the poet to speak and enforce the moral
conviction that is in him.

If, on the other hand, politics be a mere affair of casuistry; or worse--a
mere game of opportunism in which he excels who hits on the cleverest
expedient for each several crisis as it occurs; then indeed you may bid
the poet hush the voice of principle, and listen only to the sufficiently
dissonant instruction of those specialists at the game who make play in
Parliament and the press. If politics be indeed that base thing connoted
by the term "_drift_ of public affairs," then the axiom rests on wisdom
after all. The poet cannot be expected to understand the "drift," and had
better leave it to these specialists in drifting.

But if you search, you will find that poetry--rare gift as it is, and
understood by so few--has really been exerting an immense influence on
public opinion all the while that we have been deluged with assertions of
this unhappy axiom. Why, I dare to say that one-half of the sense of
Empire which now dominates political thought in Great Britain has been the
creation of her poets. The public, if it will but clear its mind of cant,
is grateful enough for such poetry as Mr. Kipling's 'Flag of England' and
Mr. Henley's 'England, my England'; and gratefully recognises that the
spirit of these songs has passed on to thousands of men, women, and
children, who have never read a line of Mr. Henley's or Mr. Kipling's
composition.

As for the axiom, it is merely the complement of that 'Art for Art's sake'
chatter which died a dishonoured death but a short while ago, and which it
is still one of the joys of life to have outlived. You will remember how
loftily we were assured that Art had nothing to do with morality: that the
novelist,