Jody--thanks so much for posting this. I don't remember reading this before. Marvellous! Thanks so much for bringing to our attention. Hardy's scope, as well as skill, never ceases to amaze.
I had been thinking of starting a thread on "poetry about politicians" rather than, say, political poetry, another animal altogether. For a process that affects our lives so much, there does seem to be a paucity of poetry on it, at least at first thought. Maybe others will prove me wrong with their copious examples!
Do you mind if I include a bit by Lucretius here? He was very much against participation in politics as an Epicurean--it is an unnecessary vexation that will lead neither to pleasure nor happiness. Such a stance was very un-Roman and thus subversive. (Much of our election vocabulary is Roman--a candidate is of course a wearer of white robes, ambition means to "go around" seeking votes, and so on.) He speaks so bitterly about the disappointments of campaigning on several occasions that I rather suspect he speaks from personal experience. Here is one brief patch (my translation)--from the third book--in a general diatribe against the seeking of power:
Take avarice and the blind drive of ambition: both may draw
Wretched men to step outside the limits of the law—
Often even as partners and accomplices in crime—
As each man, day and night, strives harder than the next to climb
Atop the pyramid of power. It is largely the dread
Of death on which these open wounds of life thrive and are fed,
For Vile Disgrace and Bitter Want seem so far from the state
Of a sweet and peaceful life, they almost loiter at Death’s gate.
Compelled by an unfounded fear, men, to evade such trouble
Amass wealth by the blood of civil war, and they redouble
Their riches in their greed, heaping one murder on another.
Stone-hearted, they take pleasure in the sad death of a brother,
While shuddering, for fear of poison , to break bread with their kin.
Likewise, envy, sprung from the self-same fear, worries them thin:
Why should that man win power? That man there before their eyes?
And be looked up to, strutting in the bright robes of high office—
They gripe—while they writhe in the mire of obscurity and shame?
Some fritter their lives away pursuing statues and a name.
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