PB Shelley read by Classic Poetry Aloud:

http://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/

Giving voice to the poetry of the past.

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England in 1819

by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)

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.

First aired: 24 April 2009

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