“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,—

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flowThrough 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 preyMakes as a two-edged sword to all who wieldGolden 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 mayBurst, to illumine our tempestous day.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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