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Thomas Penrose enlisted as a soldier in the British capture of Nova Colonia,
South America, which had been seized by the Spanish. He was wounded in
an ill-fated naval battle of 1762 and never fully recovered. When he
returned to England he took orders and received the curacy of Newbury. Much
of Penrose’s poetry is concerned with Britain’s wars.
His main work is the collection Flights of Fancy
(1775), which contained the poem given below. It also included “The
Helmet”, which is a poem about the Civil War of the
mid-seventeenth century. Also in 1775, Penrose published
“Address to the Genius of Britain”, in which he deprecates the
struggle then about to commence between England and its American
colonies. His focus is often on principles, such as patriotism, which
guide national decisions and seal the fate of men.
The poem included here is the first original composition published in
English, i.e. a poem which was not based on a Norse source text. The
text has a military theme, which deals with the theme of patriotism.
It focus is the power of the poetic voice, which awakens docile warriors to
new courage. Its setting and theme are more than a little reminiscent
of the banquet scene in John Dryden’s much- revered poem Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music (1697),
which deals with the rewards of heroism and martial success, when
Alexander the Great is fired with zeal to war, leading to the burning
of Persepolis. Dryden’s theme of artistic composition compelling a
warrior’s fervour was perhaps seen as an apt analogy to the
skalds encouraging warriors to battle through their verses (this was
explained by Mallet and others) At least Dryden’s poem was later
referred to in one of the many translations of Ragnar Lodbrog’s
Death Song.Poems, Chiefly by Gentlemen of Devonshire and
Cornwall, ed. R. Polwhele, vol. 2 (Bath: R.
Cruttwell, 1792), 25–8.
Despite Penrose’s inaccuracies in describing the old Scandinavian
warriors’ armour, his experiment with a Norse setting was well
received. The editor of The General Biographical
Dictionary called it one of “the rare productions of modern
genius”.The General Biographical Dictionary, ed.
Alexander Chalmers, new ed., vol. 24 (London: J. Nichols, 1815),
308.
***
Source: Thomas Penrose,