larry_h
05-31-2006, 11:02 AM
This one's kind of fun - a King who looks for an answer and runs into some trouble doing it. I'm really getting into Percy Shelley as being very creative. I only wish he'd written more.
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,
Tiill they drop, blind in blood, without a blow;
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army, who 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.
-Percy Shelley
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,
Tiill they drop, blind in blood, without a blow;
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army, who 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.
-Percy Shelley