Fortnightly Poem 3.A (Featured)

In the interests of acknowledging our debt to the classics and as a contribution to the debate about Monarchy vs Republic I include this little gem from Shelley:

England in 1819 Percy Bysshe Shelley

An old mad, blind, despised and dying king—

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring—

Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,

But leech -like to their fainting country cling,

Till they drop, blind in blood without a blow—

A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field—

An army which liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield—

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;

Religion Christless, Godless— a book sealed;

A Senate— Tune’s worst statute unrepealed—

Are graves, from which a glorious phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

Percy Bysshe Shelley from ‘The Map and the Clock : Poetry of Britain and

Ireland chosen by Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke’