An old, mad, blind, despis'd, 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 starv'd and stabb'd in the untill'd field,
An army, which
liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edg'd sword to all who wield,
Golden and
sanguine laws which tempt and slay,
Religion
Christless, Godless - a
book seal'd,
A Senate -
Time's worst statute unrepeal'd,
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our
tempestuous day.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1839.