Most of us think of Percy Bysshe Shelley as a romantic poet concerned with love and beauty. He was, of course. But he was also a fierce fighter for liberty and foe of unbridled political power.
His target in this sonnet was King George:
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 seal'd,
A Senate - Time's worst statute unrepealed,
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
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So the poor lad had porphyria, I learned last week from a documentary. But they didn't know it by then.
And together with hemophilia as hereditary diseases stemming from the British royal family it had great influence on the Russian and Spanish reigns as well.
He stood, and spoke, and blustered tall
equipment, arms, a platfom,
a smarmy grin, a finger sign,
a bulging crotch;
the warriors on camera grin, we be, we be,
the troops, our soldiers, saviors all
the best, the rest, those others, fate;
they pray, give up, hope, hesitate
The turkey sits, a photo op
the crackle crunches no its not
the lights flash, the salad wilts, tomatoes bleed
runny pale blood
:) ;)
Ana: Let me guess. It's not Shelly.
Ana: impressive.
But the newspapers called him "Farmer George" because of his folksy manners and professed love of the simple bucolic life. They agreed you'd totally want to have a beer with him, except his guards would probably chop you to pieces first. A string of very smart, experienced ministers tried to explain why England could never "win" his Transatlantic War on Tea-Tossing Terrorists, but George always fired those negativists, because he believed in the Divine Right of Kings, which meant God assured George he was Right. It turned out it was a lot harder to pacify a distant, loosely-connected network of colonies than it was to finish the annexation of a desperately poor and broken neighboring island, but by the time his British subjects realized the extent of their defeat, George had reached a nadir of raving lunacy that even the most ardent of his courtiers couldn't ignore. Sic semper tyrannis?
(Can't remember if this is the one whose wastrel son would drag his drinking buddies along to mock the old man's rantings, but I can totally see Jenna and Not-Jenna selling the rights to Fox News 2019.)