Old School Ranting
Today is Percy Bysshe Shelley's birthday, and, in honor of the occasion, take a second to enjoy one of his sonnets:
Sonnet: England in 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who
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.
He was, of course, writing about the George of his day. As far as I know, though, the rightwing bloggers of the time did not accuse him of suffering from George Derangement Syndrome . . .
Labels: arts, diversions, poetry
posted by Dan at 8/04/2008 06:50:00 AM
3 Comments:
Like Mark Twain said: "History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme."
The Six Acts
Was Shelley's "glorious Phantom" Arthur Thistlewood?
Lance - I had never heard of Thistlewood before your comment, but please don't make all my Democratic friends think I just dared to post something kind about a Libertarian!
Shelley was an atheist swine: and no atheist belongs in political office.
Every officially atheistic government has been a totalitarian psyho case; look at the Chines trying to enforce atheism on the Tibetans as a means of destroying
their cultural identity.
Shelley is in hell.
FREE TIBET!
The Anti Athist
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