ENGLAND IN 1819It's not kings and princes these days, but Prime Ministers and their ministerial cohorts. Ring any bells?
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.
"There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Thoreau.
Friday, 8 May 2009
Old, Mad, Blind, Despised: Surely Not Gordon?
And just to cast a longer, historical view on the current putrescent condition of the British body politic, here is Shelley's poem:
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