Explore "Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819" by Percy Bysshe Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As from an ancestral oak / Two empty ravens sound their clarion, / Yell by yell, and croak by croak, / When they scent the noonday smoke / Of fresh human carrion: -
As two gibbering night-birds flit / From their bowers of deadly yew / Through the night to frighten it, / When the moon is in a fit, / And the stars are none, or few: -
As a shark and dog-fish wait / Under an Atlantic isle, / For the negro-ship, whose freight / Is the theme of their debate, / Wrinkling their red gills the while-
Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, / Two scorpions under one wet stone, / Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle, / Two crows perched on the murrained cattle, / Two vipers tangled into one.