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Romantic Poetry
Third year

Pecry Bysshe Shelley
England in 1819
Summary
The speaker describes the state of England in 1819
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” The princes are “the dregs of their dull race,” and flow through
public scorn like mud, unable to see, feel for, or know their people, clinging like leeches
to their country until they “drop, blind in blood, without a blow
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” Each of these things, the
speaker says, is like a grave from which “a glorious Phantom” may burst to illuminate
“our tempestuous day
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Like many of Shelley’s sonnets, it does not fit the rhyming patterns one
might expect from a nineteenth-century sonnet; instead, the traditional Petrarchan
division between the first eight lines and the final six lines is disregarded, so that certain
rhymes appear in both sections: ABABABCDCDCCDD
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The sonnet’s structure is out
of joint, just as the sonnet proclaims England to be
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The result of his political commitment was a series of
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angry political poems condemning the arrogance of power, including “Ozymandias” and
“England in 1819
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”
The furious, violent metaphors Shelley employs throughout this list (nobles as
leeches in muddy water, the army as a two-edged sword, religion as a sealed book,
Parliament as an unjust law) leave no doubt about his feelings on the state of his nation
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” What this Phantom might be is not specified in the poem, but it seems
to hint simultaneously at the Spirit of the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and at the
possibility of liberty won through revolution, as it was won in France
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)

Analysis
"Sonnet: England in 1819" is one of Shelley's most vigorous political statements
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The sonnet is probably the best of a group of political poems written by
Shelley in 1819 which were inspired by Shelley's indignation in regard to the condition of
England at that time
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Any publisher who would print "Sonnet: England in 1819" ran the
risk of being jailed or fined or both
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In 1819, he was eighty-one
years old, insane, blind, and deaf
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" His
separation from his wife, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, after a year of marriage caused
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a public scandal, and his numerous affairs injured his reputation
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His cabinet ministers were arch-conservatives
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In calling them leeches who are bleeding their country, Shelley is
indulging in hyperbole
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There was rioting, some destruction of property, inevitable arrests
and repressive measures
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Shelley was convinced that revolution was going to
break out in England, "a glorious Phantom" that would "illumine our tempestuous day
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On August 16, 1819, a large number of people in favor of
parliamentary reform had gathered in St
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When troops made an attempt to arrest Hunt, a panic ensued in
which eleven people were killed and four hundred were injured
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"Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay" are
laws that vested interests caused to be passed and which led to bloodshed
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"Time's worst statute" refers to the restrictions
under which English Roman Catholics were forced to live
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"Catholic emancipation" had been a lively political issue for several years, and not
until 1829 did Catholics recover most of their civil liberties

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