England in 1819

"England in 1819" is a VERY bitter poem, an attack on the state of things in this place and time. Consult the footnotes before you respond to/explicate this. Discuss WHAT the poem attacks and WHY, but also address the end of the poem. Like "Ozymandias," this is a sonnet, so those of you who took the first half of this course, as well as those of you familiar with the sonnet form, might also discuss how Shelley adapts the form to his purpose.

The speaker wants the current leadership gone. He (or she, there's no sex indicated, and not to personify the speaker as the poet, but considering that and the topic, I personally find the voice masculine) has no love for the king and controllers of this country. "An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King" which is true as King Charles had been declared insane and would die the following year. The princes of the time are equally useless and little liked by the public as well, "Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow//Through public scorn,-mud from a muddy spring". These people who run the country don't know the plight of the people below them and the speaker feels that they don't care, that these rulers are destroying the country by sucking it dry if nothing stopped them, "Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,//But leechlike to their fainting country cling,//Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow." The people are the ones who will suffer from this, as they have in such cases as the Peterloo massacre where regular people were killed during a peaceful assembly, "A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field; An army, whom liberticides and prey//Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield" This action will only end up injuring the ones in charge. In the end, the speaker seems to think that rebellion will come one day and that will be the only way that the monarchy will understand the hurt they've caused, "Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may//Burst, to illumine our tempestuous days."

I wouldn't have taken this for a sonnet had it not been pointed out to me. Shelley does take the basic structure, but adapts it so instead of each stanza containing a different ending pair, the entire thing but the final two lines fall into the same pattern and the eighth line. Perhaps this is why it isn't cut into separate stanzas. It's notable how many lines end with strong words with this poem's theme, "King" "cling" "blow" "prey" "wield" "slay" "sealed" "unrepealed" while the final lines end with "may" and "day" as they have a more positive look, something that mind change what's been happening currently. I did notice he did keep to the 10 syllables, mostly, though I could be mistaking my pronunciation on the lines that read like 11.