I'm blogging poetry...

to cheer myself up. A gang of dealers has moved in next door and they're making my life very difficult. Hopefully things will soon change.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was writing 200 years ago. He hated tyranny in all its forms and wrote about the fight for equality, including equality for women and in this he was influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft.

In August 1819 a huge and peaceful demonstration occurred in Manchester, only two miles from where I now live. Thousands of ordinary people met in St Peter's Fields to call for the vote. The local yeomanry with sabres and horses attacked the crowd killing 13 people and injuring many more. In response Shelley wrote The Mask of Anarchy, one of the most powerful political poems ever written.

Here's the first six stanzas plus the final three that address the impact of Peterloo and the anger it generated. The poem concludes with a call to arms that can still send shivers down my spine.

The Mask of Anarchy

I met murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him.

All were fat, and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.

Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to millstones as they fell;

And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.

Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.

And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies...

(The final bit is a roar of anger about Peterloo)

And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

And these words, shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are the many - they are the few.


It speaks for itself. Anyone interested in reading more about Shelley's politics and poetry should read Paul Foot's Red Shelley.