Explore "Sonnet: England in 1819" by Percy Bysshe Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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,-Time's worst statute, unrepealed,- / Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may / Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.