The modern poet can only repeat that this is false, and that a resume of
history proves it. Shelley traces the rise and decadence of poetry
during periods of freedom and slavery. He points out, "The period in our
history of the grossest degradation of the drama is the reign of Charles
II, when all the forms in which poetry had been accustomed to be
expressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly power over liberty and
virtue." Gray, in _The Progress of Poesy_, draws the same
conclusion as Shelley:
Her track, where'er the goddess roves,
Glory pursue, and generous shame,
The unconquerable will, and freedom's holy flame.
Other poets, if they do not base their conclusions upon history, assert
no less positively that every true poet is a lover of freedom.
[Footnote: See Gray, _The Bard_; Burns, _The Vision_; Scott, _The Bard's
Incantation_; Moore, _The Minstrel Boy_, _O Blame Not the Bard_, _The
Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls_, _Shall the Harp then be Silent_,
_Dear Harp of My Country_; Wordsworth, _The Brownies' Cell_, _Here
Pause_; Tennyson, _Epilogue_, _The Poet_; Swinburne, _Victor Hugo_, _The
Centenary of Landor_, _To Catullus_, _The Statue of Victor Hugo_, _To
Walt Whitman in America_; Browning, _Sordello_; Barry Cornwall,
_Miriam_; Shelley, _To Wordsworth_, _Alastor_, _The Revolt of Islam_,
_Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_, _Prometheus Unbound_; S.
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