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.