An anarchist poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 -1822)

An excerpt from The Mask of Anarchy:

What is Freedom? - ye can tell
what slavery is, all too well -
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.
It is to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
'So that ye for them are made
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will bent,
For their defence and nourishment.
It is to see your children weak
With their mothers pine and peak,
When the winter winds are bleak, -
They are dying as I speak.
It is to hunger for such diet
As the rich man in his riot
Casts to the fat dogs that lie
Surfeiting beneath his eye;
It is to let the Ghost of Gold
Take from Toil a thousandfold
More that ever its substance could
In the tyrannies of old.
It is to be a slave in soul
And to hold no strong control
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of thee
Let a great Assembly be
Of the fearless and the free
On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around.
From the workhouse and the prison
As corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old
who Groan for pain, and weep for cold
'Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that thee
Are, as God has made thee, free -
And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again -
'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Percy
• Bysshe
• Shelley

[riv3rrun]

This was written about a massacre in England, by the British government in 1819. Shelley is *not* using 'anarchy' in a political sense. 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!' With a pace stately and fast, Over English land he passed, Trampling to a mire of blood The adoring multitude.

[KenCat1337]

Ye are many - they are few.

[JTolanful]

Good poem, poor reading...sorry but please lean to read the punctuation not the rhyme; its really distracting.

[MrIzzyDizzy]

@riv3rrun indeed the poem is about human rights and workers right and freedom - might better have been titled the mask of monarchy - as it very much against government oppression of any kind - politacal anarchy despite the negative connotation - is actualy for freedom sharing and self regulating society and peace

[MrIzzyDizzy]

'Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you -

Ye are many - they are few.

[solankijimmy]

People, you are concentrating too much on the word "Anarchy". It is "The Mask" that is important. What Shelley might have meant (because it's my personal interpretation, which my be false) is that even after there not being anarchy, it is hugely similar to that. Rather it is Anarchy, political anarchy, but with a mask on.

[codarkstarxx13]

@hiswayornoway Haha no I didn't mean to put 'she'. I didn't even notice doing that.

[hiswayornoway]

@codarkstarxx13 She? I think you're mixing up Percy Shelley with his wife, Mary Wolstoncroft Shelley, who was a political theorist and wrote Frankenstein, and the daughter of Godwin, who wrote the famous 'Political Justice'. Now, the freedom of which Shelley speaks is more likely to be true liberal freedom than the freedom of political anarchism post Proudhon.

[codarkstarxx13]

@jakeofbow

Yes this I knew. Thoreau was also inspired by Shelley's work. What I was stating was that what Anarchy represents is not in a political Anarchy. Political Anarchy is the freedom that Shelley talks about. She calls the bloodshed and uproar of violence Anarchy, which is pretty much what you said.

[codarkstarxx13]

@jakeofbow

It is not against political Anarchy. Anarchy represents the violence of tyrannical powers. It has nothing to do with Anarchy in the aspect of no rulers. That would be hypocritical for Anarchy to claim itself God, King and Law.

Anarchy in this poem is not an Anarchist sentiment.

[codarkstarxx13]

@riv3rrun

You are correct. I have so many people criticize me in my references to The Masque of Anarchy. Anarchy here is used in the definitive sense referring to uproar and destruction. If it were dealing with Anarchy in a political sense, GOD, KING AND LAW would be incredibly contradictory. It is not a poem against political anarchy nor is it for it. It is against Tyranny and Anarchy represents the violence of Tyrannical systems.

[Shmecklecka]

Awesome.

We are Many, They are Few.

Where is everybody??