Patriotic Poetry

Useful and not

Canada, and Other Poems by J. F. Herbin

The story here is patriotic poetry. We’ve all seen it, all read it. Not many of us, born in this century or at the end of the last one, have tried to write it. Patriotism being somewhat out of fashion. Somewhat unlikely, even ridiculous.

J. F. Herbin was, I read, a quite accomplished Canadian poet, in his day. If one forgotten a little by history. (These things happen.)

He was born, and lived his early life, during the period that Canada was created and collected. When it became more than what it had earlier been.

Once a British colony — British North America — now Canada was self-governing. It had a cabinet, a prime minister. It had a house of commons and a senate. It was a union, a great union, like but not alike the United States. A country large in size — the conquest of the northern regions meant Canada was one of the largest landmasses in the world — but sparse of population. Requiring perhaps a new story.

Herbin gives some sense, quite a strong sense, of the old story. The old story of Canada as the loyal cousin of the rebellious United States. While America fought against Great Britain, Canada remained loyal. Loyal to the crown. Loyal to the empire. Some Canadians, even to this day, believe themselves to be loyalists of the old tradition: the descendents, either biologically or in spirit, of those who left the United States during the revolutionary war or after it — those who decided, actively chose, the monarchy, and something else than what was being created in Philadelphia and Boston and New York.

Herbin notes all this. Loyalist, colonist — these are images he plays with. Canada as the most ardent subject, the closest son of a great, proud mother.

But that is not all he emphasises. The poem ‘Canada’ itself is quite elemental, in ways that have almost the quality of metaphysics.

Canada as a great land born of sea and ice, and endowed with certain qualities. Not much verdure. Hard winds and storms instead. But a place where the finest of heart arrive and live. Crossing freezing oceans to go forth and multiply. Celt or Saxon, he says. All of them become one in this vast and noble land. A place of great mystery. Country of the strong. A nation whose future is surely written and surely written to be immense and potent.

Put me in the game, coach. Put me in the game.

I don’t think ‘Canada,’ as a poem, is much good. It has occasional flashes of interesting imagery. It is certainly well developed in its themes. The sense that Canada is produced by such deep primeval forces, moral and emotional sources crushed together like tectonic plates. A place that must surely matter. A place that already does.

But it presents problems. Some of them are technical. The free verse is not always interesting. It lacks inventiveness and variety. And Herbin’s strange, long, straggling lines are not disciplined. Sure though he is that his country matters, is vast and potent and famous and vital, the reader is not always so convinced.

Some things, Herbin does not mention. Perhaps he did not want to write of the industrial achievements of the new Canadian state: its building of the railways, for instance. Circling the continent with a ribbon of steel. A powerful symbol. An impressive thing. You’d think he would discuss it.

And he does not mention the Yukon, nor the gold rushes. The source of so much fiction, so much experience, so many years spent by so many men and women.

And people really did find gold out there, sometimes. Even if they brought immorality and devil-may-care living and common devilry with them. Perhaps it is not of this that Herbin wishes to sing. No such uncouth associations for his patriotic verse.

What he does instead is to appeal to things that you could say about any country. That its people have proud hearts. That their spirit is immense. That their love for their homeland is unbreakable. That their soldiers are noble and brave and the greatest and finest sons of a storied land.

All countries have brave men and noble women. At least in theory. Dare I say it but I’ve heard it all before. I’m going to leave the cinema; I think this is when I came in.

This does not mean that Herbin is a bad patriot or a terrible poet or even, dare I say it, an ineffective propagandist. It’s that, when he was writing, there was nationalism but not many real nations. Not many nations as strong as their poets’ perorations.

You can write your patriotic poems too early. They can anticipate but often struggle if what they aim to describe, to extol, is not yet there. Canada became a great country, a rich and respected one. But that was not what it was when Herbin wrote that his fatherland’s greatness was as ancient as the elements that gave it birth, as powerful as the northern snowstorms, as vast as two great oceans.

He was too early for his own good.