Ultima Ratio Regum Poem Analysis

Evaluate how a poem and lyrics to a song from different historical periods convey changing attitudes towards war.

Poetry is universally known and written, and is often referred to as a classic style of writing. It is a common way for poets to express their emotion towards an object, person or a situation. Both poems and songs reflect changing attitudes through poetical techniques such as imagery, metaphors, and symbolism. This is reflected in both the popular song by Irish band U2, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, 1983, as well as the poem by British author Spender Spence, “Ultima Ratio Regum”, 1939. These tests demonstrate that in order to acquire a deeper understanding of the poem or song, the context of cultural, social, and political views must be kept in mind. By doing so it ensures a deeper analysis and hence an idea as to what the poet was feeling whilst writing it. Both pieces are anti-war and reflect attitudes towards two different wars, occurring in two different times.

“Ultima Ratio Regum” when translated to English means, ‘the ultimate, or final battle of kings’. This poem had been written and published during the Spanish Civil War which took place during the 1930’s. The Spanish war was a war fought between two groups, one that was for fascism, and one that was against. From looking at multiple sources it can be found that most were against the move to make Spain follow the fascism government. The poem Spender Spence writes is saying that although war is unwanted, and a way of killing innocent lives, that is it futile. He does this by applying a wide range of poetic devices. The particular devices that Spender uses in the poem are both Imagery, and Symbolism.

The first device that Spencer uses is imagery, when reading the po...

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...believe the news today”, ‘I’ is referring to ‘Ireland’, the people of Northern Ireland could not believe the news when they had been told these people were murdered in cold blood. The verse then ends with “How long … how long must we sing this song … ‘cause tonight … we can be as one” this is portraying how the violence just seems to be never ending, by ending this verse with “we can be as one” they are telling the listeners that why should we fight when we can be as one? All this violence is unnecessary, and unwanted.

When listeners listen to the second verse it becomes apparent to them that this verse is talking about the violence of the time. The verse starts with “broken bottles under children’s feet”, this can be seen as a metaphor for that the result of all the violence has resulted in a culture being created for the new generation of conflict, and violence.