Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'The Mask of Anarchy'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Cross-post from war_poetry:

The Mask Of Anarchy
Written on the occasion of the massacre carried out by the British Government at Peterloo, Manchester 1819

As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.

I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:

All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.

Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.

Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.

And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.

And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw -
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'

by Percy Byshhe Shelley

[The Peterloo Massacre, Aug. 16 1819]

Comments

[madman101.livejournal.com]

The bad cop version of anarchy.


In contrast -

I believe these lines from 'Ode to a Skylark' helped inspire Thoreau's transcendental pacifism expressed as civil disobedience, thence going on to inspire Tolstoy. Gandhi, MLK, RFK, etc...


Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

[duathir.livejournal.com]

To A Skylark is an excellent poem. I know it has been posted here before, but perhaps you may wish to post it again.

Rational Anarchy presupposes rational human beings. As the poet says, "Yet if we could scorn/Hate, and pride, and fear;/ If we were things born/Not to shed a tear," - but we are not. Therefore is the Rule of Law required to govern ourselves as justly as we can contrive, because rationality is only an occasional and unreliable characteristic of our species, easily suborned by hate, pride, fear and sorrow.

[madman101.livejournal.com]

I have this thing called, "trans-anarchy". It is anarchy as a transition to something else, hopefully better. Anarchy cannot stand on its own, usually because it is an island trapped in the dominant culture, and so all those mean proclivities. And there is this theory that the foundations of man are base. The conservative view.

If we are not demolished by our self-inflicted demise of our planet, then I would like to think that there may be an alternate economics and politics that would free our better natures.

Either which way - I don't know about anyone else, and I don't care about anyone else. I stand as one against the view that we cannot govern ourselves without force from above, even if it means breaking the law, at times. There is no other way it can be done, other than this thing called transcendence.

It is what we were built for.

I'll post that Skylark poem soon. I have communities and I know what a constant drag it is to get other people to make their posts. You do an excellent job. Also, I should think that you might be a bit jaded by all these war poems. Many of them disclose us as being fairly hopeless.

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Thank you; I am glad you are finding the community of interest. I do not feel jaded by the poems; only it is sometimes difficult to keep my own political opinions to myself here.

I too would like to think there may be a better way. I will not live long enough to find out whether our species survives the middle of this century, but I have hope that we will.

We can govern ourselves without recourse to force from above for just so long as all of us agree to deal fairly and honestly with each other, and to settle our disputes by rational, peaceful means. However, as soon as a single person refuses to honor the social contract, the society has only three choices, none of them good: to compel that person's compliance, to cast that person out, or to allow that person to exploit those who do honor the contract.