{"id":6269,"date":"2013-01-23T15:27:20","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T05:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=6269"},"modified":"2013-01-23T15:27:20","modified_gmt":"2013-01-23T05:27:20","slug":"celebrate-todays-200th-anniversary-of-the-birth-of-australias-greatest-poet-charles-harpur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=6269","title":{"rendered":"Celebrate today\u2019s 200th anniversary of the birth of Australia\u2019s greatest poet, Charles Harpur"},"content":{"rendered":"

With clowns to make our laws, and knaves
\nTo rule us as of old,
\nIn vain our soil is rich, in vain
\n\u2018Tis seamed with virgin gold!
\nBut the present only yields us nought,
\nThe future only lours,
\nTill we have a braver Manhood
\nIn this Southern Land of Ours.
\n>From This Southern Land of Ours, by Charles Harpur (23 January 1813 – 10 June 1868)
\nCharles Harpur, Australia\u2019s first national poet, but also philosopher, patriot, political activist and prophet, was born the second son of convict parents 200 years ago today on 23 January 2013 at Windsor on the Hawkesbury River.
\nDespite no mention of his bicentennial birthday on that supposed font of all knowledge, the internet, Harpur\u2019s extraordinary and substantial collection of poetry, prose and philosophical writings are as pertinent and perhaps even more compelling today than they were when first published in the literary journals of the 19th century.
\nGiven the proximity of his 200th birthday to the celebration of Australia Day, and that most Australians have no knowledge of this amazing forefather who felt called to be \u201cthe Bard of thy Country\u201d, the CEC today pays tribute to Harpur\u2019s life and legacy by introducing him to you, his fellow Australians.
\nIn the mid-1800s Harpur and his poetry were synonymous with Australia coming of age and demanding its freedom and independence from the British Empire. In July 1826, the British sycophants at The Monitor newspaper in Sydney had written: \u201cThe people of New South Wales are a poor grovelling race\u2026 the scourge and the fetters and the dungeon and the Australian inquisition have reduced them to a level with the negro\u2014they are no longer Britons, but Australians!\u201d And a week later it reiterated that \u201cthey have lost their English spirit and have degenerated into Australians.\u201d
\nHarpur was proud to be one such \u201cdegenerate Australian\u201d, who like Robert Burns and other poets he greatly admired, including Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats and Poe, rejected the system of Empire and government of, for and by the oligarchs, in favour of the Republican ideal, that the common man had the potential to participate in his nation\u2019s destiny, that he was the equal of the so-called upper classes and indeed that he was individually responsible for the future course of the nation.
\nHarpur also shared the vision of \u201cfreedom and independence for the golden lands of Australia\u201d of the staunch republican Rev. Dr. John Dunmore Lang, saying of himself: \u201cI am not only a democratic Republican in theory, but by every feeling of my nature. Its first principles lie rudimentally in the moral elements of my being, ready to flower forth and bear their proper fruit. Hence, as I hold myself, on the ground of God\u2019s humanity, to be politically superior to no fellow being, so, on the same ground, I can feel myself inferior to none\u2026\u201d
\nHarpur maintained in fact that \u201cthe prime object of Society is, or should be, the perfection of Man\u201d and all his important writings from early youth on, attempted, in one form or other, to nurture his fellow citizens\u2019 \u201cthinking power\u201d as exemplified in the following stanza from his poem, Finality: \u201cWhy pile we stone on stone, to raise Jail, Fane, or Public Hall;\u2014why plan Fortress or Tower for future days; Yet leave unbuilt, to wrong or guilt, The nobler pile\u2014the Mind of Man.\u201d
\nIt worried Harpur deeply that \u201cpeople are actually in danger of dying in their nobler part of sheer forgetfulness and want of mental stimuli\u201d and he elaborated what he believed should be the aims and responsibilities of the true poet: \u201cHer true vocation is at once to quicken, exalt and purify our nobler and more exquisite passions; and by informing the imagination with wisdom\u2014suggesting beauty, both to enlarge and recompense our capacities of pathetic feeling and intellectual enjoyment, and further, in national and social regards, to illustrate whatever is virtuous in design, and glorify all that is noble in action; taking occasion also, at the same time, to pour the lightning of indignation upon everything that is mean and cowardly in the people, or tyrannical and corrupt in their rulers.\u201d
\nFew Australian writers and poets of Harpur\u2019s time, or since, could claim to have risen to his ideal. However, despite much disappointment in this regard, Harpur never relinquished his hope that one day, his vision of having a \u201cnobler Manhood in this Southern Land of ours\u201d, would be realised. He wrote: “At this moment I am a wanderer and a vagabond upon the face of my native Land\u2014after having written upon its evergreen beauty strains of feeling and imagination which, I believe, \u2018men will not willingly let die.\u2019 But my countrymen, and the world, will yet know me better. I doubt not, indeed, but that I shall yet be held in honour both by them and by it.\u201d
\nAll Australians owe it to themselves as citizens, and to the memory of this great poet, to grant Harpur\u2019s long-awaited hope by reading a selection of his truly beautiful and profound poetry on this day.
\nClick here<\/a> to read more on the life and work of Charles Harpur.
\nClick here<\/a>z for a selection of Charles Harpur\u2019s poems.
\nTo read more about Charles Harpur and the republican impulse in Australian history, click here<\/a> for a free copy of the CEC\u2019s pamphlet, From the First Fleet to the Year 2000: The Fight for an Australian Republic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With clowns to make our laws, and knaves To rule us as of old, In vain our soil is rich, in vain \u2018Tis seamed with virgin gold! But the present only yields us nought, The future only lours, Till we have a braver Manhood In this Southern Land of Ours. >From This Southern Land of … <\/p>\n

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