The Politician

William Wilfred Campbell 1860 (Newmarket) – 1918 (Ottawa)



Carven in leathern mask or brazen face,
       Were I time's sculptor, I would set this man.
       Retreating from the truth, his hawk-eyes scan
   The platforms of all public thought for place.
   There wriggling with insinuating grace,
       He takes poor hope and effort by the hand,
       And flatters with half-truths and accents bland,
   Till even zeal and earnest love grow base.

   Knowing no right, save power's grim right-of-way;
       No nobleness, save life's ignoble praise;
   No future, save this sordid day to day;
       He is the curse of these material days:
   Juggling with mighty wrongs and mightier lies,
   This worshipper of Dagon and his flies!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

32 sec read
68

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBAACCA DEDEFF
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 680
Words 105
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6

William Wilfred Campbell

William Wilfred Campbell (1 June ca. 1860 – 1 January 1918) was a Canadian poet. He is often classed as one of the country's Confederation Poets, a group that included fellow Canadians Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott; he was a colleague of Lampman and Scott. By the end of the 19th century, he was considered the "unofficial poet laureate of Canada." Although not as well known as the other Confederation poets today, Campbell was a "versatile, interesting writer" who was influenced by Robert Burns, the English Romantics, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Carlyle, and Alfred Tennyson. Inspired by these writers, Campbell expressed his own religious idealism in traditional forms and genres.  more…

All William Wilfred Campbell poems | William Wilfred Campbell Books

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