Sonnet : England in 1819

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.