by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys:
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches, and obedience
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automation.I found this poem in the forward an interesting book on
anarchism, called
The Black Flag of Anarchy: Antistatism in the United States, by
Corrine Jacker. A good read if you can find it (the first and only printing to my knowledge was in
1968), I was lucky enough to find it at my
highschool's
library, where I promptly
stole it.