In the emergence of Slovene national poetry, which came out of communities divided between separate Habsburg administrative units, Habsburg patriotism is an early constituent element. Occasional praise-poems on the birthdays and feast-days of members of the Habsburg imperial family idealistically present the monarch as a brave and capable sovereign, paternally caring for his grateful Slovenians, protecting and assuring their existence. Such formulaic-sentimental and verbally affected verse could win its authors, such as Jovan Vesel Koseski (1798–1884), some applause from an uncritical public and from conservative politicians. A few dynastic-patriotic poems were created by authors of greater literary merit and more lasting fame: Valentin Vodnik, Josip Stritar (1836–1923) and Simon Gregorčič (1844–1906).

A second type of patriotic poetry is apparently non-political, extolling the beauties of the Slovene landscape (rivers, mountains, villages, towns) and their economic advantages. Although such poems stayed within the approved register imposed by the Austrian authorities, and could be published openly, they figuratively signalled emancipatory ambitions. Metaphorically, these verses reveal disillusionment with the status of Slovenians in the multinational empire and hark back to a fondly remembered or imagined past of greater independence. A prototype of this type of poetry was Vodnik’s Pesmi na moje rojake (“Poems for my compatriots”, 1795) and his ode Vršac (1806), celebrating the mountain from which he surveys the Slovene countryside. An extreme, much later example of landscape patriotic poetry is Gregorčič’s ode Soči (“To the River Soča”, 1879), foretelling a battle between the Italians and the Austrians and the suffering of the Slovenians living nearby.

Romanticism characterizes the poetry of the century’s greatest poet, France Prešeren; his Elegija svojim rojakom (“Elegy to my compatriots”, 1832) rejects Vodnik’s Enlightenment optimism, exposes the submissiveness of his countrymen and criticizes their conformism. In the sonnet O Vrba! srečna, draga vas domača (“Oh, Vrba, happy native village dear”, 1834) Prešeren praises his home village as place of idyllic happiness that he lost when he entered the vapid world of the bourgeoisie. In Sonetni venec (“A wreath of sonnets”, 1834), his hapless love is interlaced with poetic and patriotic themes; the poet’s despondence about the Slovene condition inflects the Orpheus theme. The epic Krst pri Savici  (“The baptism on the Savica”, 1836) Romantically evokes the historic site where the Slovene nation lost its pre-Christian, pagan independence, interwoven with a tragic love story.

A third type of national-patriotic poetry implicitly or explicitly voices (more or less radical) political criticism, e.g. by advocating Pan-Slavism and/or criticizing the hegemony of German. Verse of this kind could incur political sanctions and accordingly is rarer. Vodnik’s Ilirija oživljena (“Illyria reborn”, 1811) praises Napoleon for having granted the Slovenians in the Illyrian Provinces greater civil and cultural liberties; after the Austrian restoration Vodnik, by then persona non grata, backtracked by publishing a counterpart, Ilirija zveličana (“Illyria redeemed”, 1816), praising the Habsburg dynasty for having liberated the Slovenians. Prešeren’s Zdravljica (“A toast”, 1844), despite appearing as a piece of occasional, convivial verse, unites love of the fatherland, the prospect of national empowerment and cosmopolitanism. The censors prohibited printing at the time; but in 1991 its seventh stanza was adopted by the Republic of Slovenia as its national anthem. An earlier, unofficially used national anthem had been Naprej (“Forwards”, 1860), by Simon Jenko (1835–1869); it calls on compatriots to take action for national liberation. Towards the end of the Habsburg period, the symbolist Oton Župančič (1878–1949) expressed Slovene anxieties; poems like Z vlakom (“By train”, 1903/04), Duma (1908) and Zemljevid (“A map”, 1908) address problems of industrialization, economic emigration and geopolitics under the looming advent of the First World War.