[ Printed handbill poem addressed to John Bright of the Anti-Corn Law League, MP for Birmingham. ] Celebration Ode: on the Occasion of the Bright Celebration, by Alfred Capel Shaw.

Author: 
Alfred Capel Shaw [ (1847-1918), Chief Librarian of Birmingham ] [ John Bright (1811-1889), Quaker and Radical, prominent member of the Anti-Corn Law League, Corn Law, MP for Birmingham ]
Publication details: 
Hudson & Son, Printers, Edmund Street, Birmingham. [ 1883. ]
£65.00
SKU: 17660

4pp., 12mo. Bifolium on pink paper. In fair condition, lightly-aged, with minor evidence of removal from stub. A poem of 13 irregular stanzas. Begins: 'When some great warrior returns | Triumphant to his native land, | The heart of all the nation burns | To welcome him. In countless bands | They line the street, | And press to greet, | With shouts and cries and loud acclaim, | The man who saved them from the shame | And misery of defeat.' The seventh stanza is typical: 'They [ 'starving men and women' ] had been patient many years, | No wild, rebellious cry was theirs; | But unto heaven their groans and tears | Went upward mingled with their prayers. | And Famine stalked about the land, | And Death a mighty harvest reaped, | And Want and Sin went hand in hand, | And all the land in misery steeped; | While far and wide rang out the mournful cry, | We have no bread, and wanting bread, we die!' (The eighth stanza concerns the '[b]rown corn in many a furrow', to be found 'across the sea'.) Scarce: no copy in the British Library, and only two copies on OCLC WorldCat and COPAC (Trinity College Dublin and Cambridge).