Shelley, Percy Bysshe - England in 1819

What was England like in 1819?

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 th’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 Christeless, Godless –a book sealed;
A Senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed –

Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
This poem is made up of 14 lines which are split into four stanzas.

Analysis

This poem is a English sonnet because it has three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. Lines have a regular length; begin with capital letters and are aligned. There is a regular punctuation and a regular rhyme scheme: ABAB- CDCD-EFEF-HH. There are some run-on-lines and some similes.
The title refers to the massacre of Peterloo. In the first line the poet describes the kings through a series of negative adjectives. The princes are as their father. After the poet makes the list of all the institutions things that ARE GRAVES, because the kings have drained all.

The poem

The poem can be divided into three parts:

1-The first line, where the poet introduces the king.

2- From the second line to the twelfth, where the poet

makes a list of all the negative things England is afflicted with.

3-The rhyming couplet, where there is the quality referred to the things (“Are graves”), and where there is an intimation of future revolution.

The poet represents negatively his time and his king, with many adjectives and names.