Instructions
Having thought about the mood, tone and key words in the poem, now think about what the poem is about. What ideas and themes can you identify in the poem?
What issues in society is the narrator of the poem trying to raise? How does he present these as problems?
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