Instructions

England 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, whom liberticide and pray
Makes as a two edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless and 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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley