Sonnet: 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 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.

                                    Percy Bysshe Shelley