[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book review
contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until
after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for
several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for
a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]
Introduction
The
Ballad of the White Horse is a 2,684 line poem
about conservatism, and it is brilliant. It has been called the
last great epic poem written in English. I have not read the three
dozen or so English epic poems that Wikipedia claims have been
written since, so I cannot confirm the “last” part, but I can
confirm the rest. It is a great poem, in both quality and size, and
it is undoubtedly an epic poem. It has almost all the qualities
required of an epic poem: it begins by invoking a muse (his wife),
it starts in media res, the plot is centered around a hero of
legend, there are supernatural visions and interventions, and an
omniscient narrator. The only epic requirement it lacks is a long
boring list shoved in somewhere, for which I am grateful.
