Poetry in politics

.. or more accurately, politics in poetry.

Apologies for not posting much, life is grind grind, one foot in front of the other. Sixteen tons and whaddya get ..? To be honest, can't really think of much to write that is interesting or entertaining - especially as there are so many others around that write much better than self.

A post from the always entertaining Lines from a Floating Life has caught my eye. A classic poem by Henry Lawson (1888), that is rather uncomfortably close to the situation developing in Australia today.

.. or this, rather more terse -

Sonnet: England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, --
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, -- mud from a muddy spring, --
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, --
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, --
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, --
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless -- a book sealed;
A Senate, -- Time's worst statute unrepealed, --
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley