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The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester
The Masque of Anarchy (or The Mask of Anarchy) is a British political poem written in 1819 following the Peterloo massacre of that year.
98 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1832
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About the author
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1,638 books1,400 followersWorks of Percy Bysshe Shelley, British romantic poet, include "To a Skylark" in 1820;
Prometheus Unbound
, the lyric drama; and "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.
The Cenci , work of art or literature of Percy Bysshe Shelley of 1819, depicts Beatrice Cenci, Italian noblewoman.
People widely consider Percy Bysshe Shelley among the finest majors of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias , Ode to the West Wind , and The Masque of Anarchy . His major long visionary Alastor , The Revolt of Islam , and the unfinished The Triumph of Life .
Unconventional life and uncompromising idealism of Percy Bysshe Shelley combined with his strong skeptical voice to make an authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations, the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and in other languages, such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy . Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and [authorm:Bertrand Russell] also admired him. Famous for his association with his contemporaries Lord Byron, he also married Mary Shelley, novelist.
The Cenci , work of art or literature of Percy Bysshe Shelley of 1819, depicts Beatrice Cenci, Italian noblewoman.
People widely consider Percy Bysshe Shelley among the finest majors of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias , Ode to the West Wind , and The Masque of Anarchy . His major long visionary Alastor , The Revolt of Islam , and the unfinished The Triumph of Life .
Unconventional life and uncompromising idealism of Percy Bysshe Shelley combined with his strong skeptical voice to make an authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations, the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and in other languages, such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy . Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and [authorm:Bertrand Russell] also admired him. Famous for his association with his contemporaries Lord Byron, he also married Mary Shelley, novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
November 27, 2015
An ode to Slaughtered Workers
16 April 2013
This poem was written after what was known as the Peterloo Massacre which occurred in Manchester in 1819. It was four years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and England had fallen into recession, and the north of the country had been hit particularly hard. In response to this the working class began to stage a series of protests with culminated in Peterloo, and the response to these protests was a cavalry charged by the British army which left 15 dead and 700 wounded.
Shelley writes in a rather apocalyptic style in his response to the massacre and uses the imagery of the four horsemen of the book of Revelation, though he actually names three of the horsemen, with the forth horseman being named Anarchy. I suspected that this forth horseman related to the English government. I also suspect that it suggests that where the government is concerned there is no law that binds them and as such the country lives in a state of anarchy. While there is law that restricts the actions of those who live under it, the higher one goes, the less the law imposes restrictions on them. Mind you, the cavalrymen would have been just as much under the law as the people whom they charged.
This is not the only text in which Shelley explores the theme of the lawlessness of the government as he also explores it in The Cenci, where the antagonist rapes his daughter and gets away with it, but when the daughter and her brothers then seek revenge against him for his crime they are captured, tried, and executed for their participation in the deed. With regards to the Peterloo Massacre it is clear that the cavalry may have, on one hand, been attempting to keep the peace, but more likely than not it was acting to protect the interests of the masters of the land.
What Shelley laments a lot during his writing is the failure of the French revolution. Granted, Shelley was only a child at the height of the revolution, and would have entered his adult life during the reign of Napoleon, however it is not so much the failure of the revolution that is important, it is the ideas that it generated. Once the idea of freedom for the masses came to the fore in France, it began to filter throughout Europe, and even across the channel to England. In 1795 England was practically on the verge of revolution herself.
One particular line in the poem demonstrates the lawlessness of the government when Anarchy says 'I am God, King, and Law' indicating that all law stems from the government, but with government being Anarchy, there is no law because something cannot come out of nothing. To Shelley the government is illegitimate, and as such the law it creates is also illegitimate because there is nothing, other than brute force, that gives it legitimacy. Being an atheist himself, Shelley no doubt completely rejects the divine right of Kings.
16 April 2013
This poem was written after what was known as the Peterloo Massacre which occurred in Manchester in 1819. It was four years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and England had fallen into recession, and the north of the country had been hit particularly hard. In response to this the working class began to stage a series of protests with culminated in Peterloo, and the response to these protests was a cavalry charged by the British army which left 15 dead and 700 wounded.
Shelley writes in a rather apocalyptic style in his response to the massacre and uses the imagery of the four horsemen of the book of Revelation, though he actually names three of the horsemen, with the forth horseman being named Anarchy. I suspected that this forth horseman related to the English government. I also suspect that it suggests that where the government is concerned there is no law that binds them and as such the country lives in a state of anarchy. While there is law that restricts the actions of those who live under it, the higher one goes, the less the law imposes restrictions on them. Mind you, the cavalrymen would have been just as much under the law as the people whom they charged.
This is not the only text in which Shelley explores the theme of the lawlessness of the government as he also explores it in The Cenci, where the antagonist rapes his daughter and gets away with it, but when the daughter and her brothers then seek revenge against him for his crime they are captured, tried, and executed for their participation in the deed. With regards to the Peterloo Massacre it is clear that the cavalry may have, on one hand, been attempting to keep the peace, but more likely than not it was acting to protect the interests of the masters of the land.
What Shelley laments a lot during his writing is the failure of the French revolution. Granted, Shelley was only a child at the height of the revolution, and would have entered his adult life during the reign of Napoleon, however it is not so much the failure of the revolution that is important, it is the ideas that it generated. Once the idea of freedom for the masses came to the fore in France, it began to filter throughout Europe, and even across the channel to England. In 1795 England was practically on the verge of revolution herself.
One particular line in the poem demonstrates the lawlessness of the government when Anarchy says 'I am God, King, and Law' indicating that all law stems from the government, but with government being Anarchy, there is no law because something cannot come out of nothing. To Shelley the government is illegitimate, and as such the law it creates is also illegitimate because there is nothing, other than brute force, that gives it legitimacy. Being an atheist himself, Shelley no doubt completely rejects the divine right of Kings.
August 28, 2022
Well better late than never for me to discover this poem about non-violent opposition to the oppressors, a message that will be taken up in increasing numbers as governments become more and more unpopular over the next year or so.
This poem of 91 stanzas was written in response to the Peterloo massacre of 1819 in Manchester.
Shelley was a fierce advocate of non-violence and vegetarianism. He drowned in 1822 at the age of 29 in Italy.
I make no apologies for repeating these lines:
Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fall'n on you:
Ye are many - they are few.
Remember them when you're feeling there's nothing you can do.
This poem of 91 stanzas was written in response to the Peterloo massacre of 1819 in Manchester.
Shelley was a fierce advocate of non-violence and vegetarianism. He drowned in 1822 at the age of 29 in Italy.
I make no apologies for repeating these lines:
Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fall'n on you:
Ye are many - they are few.
Remember them when you're feeling there's nothing you can do.
August 31, 2017
“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.”
Shelley's status as a political revolutionary is well documented. Karl Marx claimed “(Shelley) would always have been one of the advanced guard of Socialism,” Friedrich Engels wrote “we all knew Shelley by heart,” and most recently, the above quoted lines have become the battle cry for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. Even among the great expanse of Shelley's revolutionary poetry, The Mask of Anarchy stands as his most explicitly political. Although with all great poems there are endless avenues of inquiry, my interest here is the way Shelley enacts democracy through a transvaluation of genre in The Mask of Anarchy.
The Mask undoubtedly plays on a pun that directs us to the genre of the masque. The masque is a form of drama first developed in England during the late medieval and early Tudor period and personifies moral forces to present an allegorical moral lesson. This is present in Shelley's “masque” as well, seen in the figures of Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy confronted by Hope who represents the cause of righteousness. However, the traditional masque is very different from Shelley's. Masques were usually incredibly expensive forms of entertainment for the nobility and thus always appealed to aristocratic values. In addition, the people who played the figures of goodness and righteousness were always the rich aristocrats who funded these expensive performances. The ruling class of the gentry embodies the good while evil always appears as something external to the oppressing class.
Shelley's transvaluation of this genre begins with his inversion of the placement of these allegorical figures. Shelley links his personifications of Murder, Fraud, and Hypocrisy directly to specifically named aristocrats who were powerful figures in the English government. However, Shelley does not fall into the common trap of individualizing and psychologizing evil, reducing the problem of evil to a few bad apples that simply have to be rooted out. All of these connections of allegorical figures with actual persons are made through the word “like,” i.e. through simile. While simile establishes similarity, this similarity is never equivalence. Simile's function is always to make things similar, but not the same because what is similar is by definition never the same. So while Shelley points out these individuals, these individuals are not themselves Murder, Fraud, and Hypocrisy. Instead, the simile offers these persons as reference points through which we can understand evil while also reminding us that true evil lies elsewhere. Thus, Shelley offers us a new masque that shows us where the forces of evil really are – the ruling class. But even if the ruling class perpetuates evil, evil lies not in the individuals members of this class, but rather in something greater than them: their objective position in social relations that oppress the lower classes.
Shelley's second method of transvaluation is his de-dramatization of the masque. Like I said before, masques tended to be lavish performances that were limited to the wealthy because of their high production costs. Although The Mask of Anarchy undoubtedly preserves certain elements of the dramatic form, it is not in itself a dramatic play. Thus, The Mask can be consumed by the working classes without the need for production costs and time for rehearsal. Instead, it can be read and distributed among people who find themselves in the same position as the English workers forced into conditions lower than “savage men, / Or wild beasts with a den.” Shelley explicitly had this in mind when writing The Mask, deliberately making it easier to read than his other texts in order to appeal to a working class that had been deprived of its right to education.
Shelley's inversion of the masque opens us up to a new perspective about how poetic form can subvert the bourgeois monopoly on artistic production. Precisely because Shelley's writings are far removed from our narcissistic and psychologized poetry today, it is time to return to his 200 year old texts to rediscover a revolutionary impulse that can carry us into the future – for we are many, they are few.
In unvanquishable number–
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you–
Ye are many–they are few.”
Shelley's status as a political revolutionary is well documented. Karl Marx claimed “(Shelley) would always have been one of the advanced guard of Socialism,” Friedrich Engels wrote “we all knew Shelley by heart,” and most recently, the above quoted lines have become the battle cry for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. Even among the great expanse of Shelley's revolutionary poetry, The Mask of Anarchy stands as his most explicitly political. Although with all great poems there are endless avenues of inquiry, my interest here is the way Shelley enacts democracy through a transvaluation of genre in The Mask of Anarchy.
The Mask undoubtedly plays on a pun that directs us to the genre of the masque. The masque is a form of drama first developed in England during the late medieval and early Tudor period and personifies moral forces to present an allegorical moral lesson. This is present in Shelley's “masque” as well, seen in the figures of Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy confronted by Hope who represents the cause of righteousness. However, the traditional masque is very different from Shelley's. Masques were usually incredibly expensive forms of entertainment for the nobility and thus always appealed to aristocratic values. In addition, the people who played the figures of goodness and righteousness were always the rich aristocrats who funded these expensive performances. The ruling class of the gentry embodies the good while evil always appears as something external to the oppressing class.
Shelley's transvaluation of this genre begins with his inversion of the placement of these allegorical figures. Shelley links his personifications of Murder, Fraud, and Hypocrisy directly to specifically named aristocrats who were powerful figures in the English government. However, Shelley does not fall into the common trap of individualizing and psychologizing evil, reducing the problem of evil to a few bad apples that simply have to be rooted out. All of these connections of allegorical figures with actual persons are made through the word “like,” i.e. through simile. While simile establishes similarity, this similarity is never equivalence. Simile's function is always to make things similar, but not the same because what is similar is by definition never the same. So while Shelley points out these individuals, these individuals are not themselves Murder, Fraud, and Hypocrisy. Instead, the simile offers these persons as reference points through which we can understand evil while also reminding us that true evil lies elsewhere. Thus, Shelley offers us a new masque that shows us where the forces of evil really are – the ruling class. But even if the ruling class perpetuates evil, evil lies not in the individuals members of this class, but rather in something greater than them: their objective position in social relations that oppress the lower classes.
Shelley's second method of transvaluation is his de-dramatization of the masque. Like I said before, masques tended to be lavish performances that were limited to the wealthy because of their high production costs. Although The Mask of Anarchy undoubtedly preserves certain elements of the dramatic form, it is not in itself a dramatic play. Thus, The Mask can be consumed by the working classes without the need for production costs and time for rehearsal. Instead, it can be read and distributed among people who find themselves in the same position as the English workers forced into conditions lower than “savage men, / Or wild beasts with a den.” Shelley explicitly had this in mind when writing The Mask, deliberately making it easier to read than his other texts in order to appeal to a working class that had been deprived of its right to education.
Shelley's inversion of the masque opens us up to a new perspective about how poetic form can subvert the bourgeois monopoly on artistic production. Precisely because Shelley's writings are far removed from our narcissistic and psychologized poetry today, it is time to return to his 200 year old texts to rediscover a revolutionary impulse that can carry us into the future – for we are many, they are few.
Read
February 28, 2021mic drop. straight socialist fire from shelley
June 21, 2022
Although Karl Marx was only one year old when the Peterloo Massacre killed 15 protestors in a crowd demanding better parliamentary representation, thus occasioning the 27 year old Shelley to write this short poem, it is a virtual Marxist analysis that the British romantic poet brought to his conception.
Why ‘Anarchy’ to describe mask worn by ‘murder on the way/He wore a mask like Castlereagh … who feeds his bloodhounds human hearts’? Shelley saw in this heinous act of oppression the logical end of a ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ world in which the strongest take all for themselves and leave the overwhelming majority with barely the means of subsistence – that is, if they are lucky. In this ‘might makes right’ world, to even question the status quo is to violate ‘natural order’ in which those with social, economic, political and military power in essence follow no law but the dictates of their own desires. Such is anarchy.
Why a Marxist analysis? Shelley truly empathized with the working-class protesters, whom he saw to be little more than slaves of the system. ‘Slavery – ‘Tis to work and have such pay/As just keeps life from day to day/Ye for them are made. Loom and plough and sword and spade/’Tis to be a slave in soul, and to hold no strong control/Over your own wills/but be All that others made of ye.’ He appreciated that the newly formed industrial capitalist class would pay only such wages as would allow the workers to return the next day, i.e., subsistence wages.
Is there a Marxist class struggle here? Yes: ‘Bishops, lawyers, peers and spies’ come out to exhort the glories of ‘God and King and Law’ in order that any objection to such oppression and lack of freedom with be seen as coming from those who ‘complain … [and thus] tyrants ride over your wives and you/Blood is on the grass like dew.’
Why Shelley’s use of such allegorical figures: Anarchy, Death, Destruction, Murder, Fraud, Hypocrisy and Slavery on the one hand; Freedom, Dreams, Peace and Love on the other? One of the books most likely to be found in an English household at this time, other than The Bible, was most likely Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which had presented an allegorical justification for the Christian values of Piety, Patience, Tolerance, Acceptance and Submission: truly ‘religion as opiate of the masses’ stuff. Marx was said to have turned Hegel’s dialectic of the development of ideas through the thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern on its head but actually put it on its feet by grounding it in the real world in which the existing class structure with its superstructure of political, social and cultural forms is only changed through revolution of one class against another. In this poem, Shelley similarly turned Bunyan’s allegoric idealism into a realist depiction of the violence and bloodshed inherent in the system.
Unfortunately, from Kent State through the death squads in El Salvador and the massacre at Tiananmen Square to 15 year prison sentences for speaking the truth in Russia, tyranny can still be seen to be living just below the surface of all seeming civilization. With Putin, Xi and Trump all showing a brutal lack of concern for fundamental human rights, the situation is worsening rather than improving. Thus, there is ever more need for people to read Shelley’s closing exhortation:
‘From the workhouses and prisons let a vast assembly be… Declare with measured words that ye are as God has made thee, Free!’
Highly recommended. I just wish it had been longer.
Why ‘Anarchy’ to describe mask worn by ‘murder on the way/He wore a mask like Castlereagh … who feeds his bloodhounds human hearts’? Shelley saw in this heinous act of oppression the logical end of a ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ world in which the strongest take all for themselves and leave the overwhelming majority with barely the means of subsistence – that is, if they are lucky. In this ‘might makes right’ world, to even question the status quo is to violate ‘natural order’ in which those with social, economic, political and military power in essence follow no law but the dictates of their own desires. Such is anarchy.
Why a Marxist analysis? Shelley truly empathized with the working-class protesters, whom he saw to be little more than slaves of the system. ‘Slavery – ‘Tis to work and have such pay/As just keeps life from day to day/Ye for them are made. Loom and plough and sword and spade/’Tis to be a slave in soul, and to hold no strong control/Over your own wills/but be All that others made of ye.’ He appreciated that the newly formed industrial capitalist class would pay only such wages as would allow the workers to return the next day, i.e., subsistence wages.
Is there a Marxist class struggle here? Yes: ‘Bishops, lawyers, peers and spies’ come out to exhort the glories of ‘God and King and Law’ in order that any objection to such oppression and lack of freedom with be seen as coming from those who ‘complain … [and thus] tyrants ride over your wives and you/Blood is on the grass like dew.’
Why Shelley’s use of such allegorical figures: Anarchy, Death, Destruction, Murder, Fraud, Hypocrisy and Slavery on the one hand; Freedom, Dreams, Peace and Love on the other? One of the books most likely to be found in an English household at this time, other than The Bible, was most likely Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which had presented an allegorical justification for the Christian values of Piety, Patience, Tolerance, Acceptance and Submission: truly ‘religion as opiate of the masses’ stuff. Marx was said to have turned Hegel’s dialectic of the development of ideas through the thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern on its head but actually put it on its feet by grounding it in the real world in which the existing class structure with its superstructure of political, social and cultural forms is only changed through revolution of one class against another. In this poem, Shelley similarly turned Bunyan’s allegoric idealism into a realist depiction of the violence and bloodshed inherent in the system.
Unfortunately, from Kent State through the death squads in El Salvador and the massacre at Tiananmen Square to 15 year prison sentences for speaking the truth in Russia, tyranny can still be seen to be living just below the surface of all seeming civilization. With Putin, Xi and Trump all showing a brutal lack of concern for fundamental human rights, the situation is worsening rather than improving. Thus, there is ever more need for people to read Shelley’s closing exhortation:
‘From the workhouses and prisons let a vast assembly be… Declare with measured words that ye are as God has made thee, Free!’
Highly recommended. I just wish it had been longer.
May 5, 2025
actually so fire especially when read aloud
July 31, 2019
From BBC radio 3 - Drama on 3:
Ian McMillan introduces a commemoration of the Peterloo Massacre to mark the two-hundred year anniversary of the events of 16 August 1819.
Maxine Peake performs Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem of protest The Masque of Anarchy. Shelley was compelled to respond to the massacre in which cavalrymen charged campaigners protesting against the restrictive parliamentary representation of the time in St Peters Field Manchester leaving 15 dead and 700 injured. Recorded only a few miles from where it happened, Maxine Peake”s performance makes the poem - a call for political action - resonate for a contemporary audience.
We also hear eyewitness accounts from Samuel Bamford a radical reformer who led the group from Middleton and his wife Jemima Bamford performed by Jason Done and Christine Bottomley. Contemporary ballads written in the aftermath are sung by Jennifer Read.
The Masque of Anarchy, with a specially composed sound design by Peter Rice, was directed by Sarah Frankcom. The eyewitness accounts were directed by Nadia Molinari.
This commemoration of the Peterloo Massacre was a BBC North Production, produced by Susan Roberts.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...
Ian McMillan introduces a commemoration of the Peterloo Massacre to mark the two-hundred year anniversary of the events of 16 August 1819.
Maxine Peake performs Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem of protest The Masque of Anarchy. Shelley was compelled to respond to the massacre in which cavalrymen charged campaigners protesting against the restrictive parliamentary representation of the time in St Peters Field Manchester leaving 15 dead and 700 injured. Recorded only a few miles from where it happened, Maxine Peake”s performance makes the poem - a call for political action - resonate for a contemporary audience.
We also hear eyewitness accounts from Samuel Bamford a radical reformer who led the group from Middleton and his wife Jemima Bamford performed by Jason Done and Christine Bottomley. Contemporary ballads written in the aftermath are sung by Jennifer Read.
The Masque of Anarchy, with a specially composed sound design by Peter Rice, was directed by Sarah Frankcom. The eyewitness accounts were directed by Nadia Molinari.
This commemoration of the Peterloo Massacre was a BBC North Production, produced by Susan Roberts.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...
June 30, 2010
I enjoyed the words, but found the idealism and deliberate self-victimization as inane as most contemporary / modern examples of this sort of pacifism. In an uprising of a great magnitude (how it appears in the poem), it is suggested that a soldier would not strike down a "pacifistic rebel" because of the potential shame of being branded a murdered. While the concept of societal shame does not appear to have lost much of its potency over time, it has certainly found itself overpowered by different impulses.
Still, the final stanza is commendable, and I'd love the poem if I was an object with no purpose other than reading.
Still, the final stanza is commendable, and I'd love the poem if I was an object with no purpose other than reading.
June 26, 2018
Shelley’nin 16 Ağustos 1819 Paterloo Katliamından sonra o sırada yaşadığı İtalya’da kaleme aldığı bu şiir Huxley’in deyimiyle şiddet içermeyen bir direniş biçimiydi. ( "The Method of resistance inculcated in by Shelley in The Mask of Anarchy is the method of non-violence" )
Daha sonraki dönemlerde de birçok politik sloganı etkileneyn şiir ( özellikle son beş mısrası ) Tiananmen gösterileri sırasında Çinli öğrenciler tarafından, Thrir’de gösteri yapan Mısırlı öğrenciler tarafından ve İngiltere İşçi Patisi lideri Jeremy Corbyn tarafından kullanılmıştır.
Seçim sisteminde yaşanan adaletsiz durum ve yaşanan ekonomik sıkıntıları protesto için Aziz Peter meydanında toplanan eylemciler orantısız güç kullanılarak dağıtılmış ve yaşananlardan sonra olay Waterloo muharebesine bir gönderme olarak Paterloo katliamı olarak anılmıştır.
Günümüzde bize de ilham verebilecek bir eser olan bu şiir edebi değeriyle beraber belki de daha çok politik mesajlarıyla daha ön planda olmayı hak ediyor.
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.
Daha sonraki dönemlerde de birçok politik sloganı etkileneyn şiir ( özellikle son beş mısrası ) Tiananmen gösterileri sırasında Çinli öğrenciler tarafından, Thrir’de gösteri yapan Mısırlı öğrenciler tarafından ve İngiltere İşçi Patisi lideri Jeremy Corbyn tarafından kullanılmıştır.
Seçim sisteminde yaşanan adaletsiz durum ve yaşanan ekonomik sıkıntıları protesto için Aziz Peter meydanında toplanan eylemciler orantısız güç kullanılarak dağıtılmış ve yaşananlardan sonra olay Waterloo muharebesine bir gönderme olarak Paterloo katliamı olarak anılmıştır.
Günümüzde bize de ilham verebilecek bir eser olan bu şiir edebi değeriyle beraber belki de daha çok politik mesajlarıyla daha ön planda olmayı hak ediyor.
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.
October 14, 2016
Combining poetry, philosophy and political commentary, this Shelley poem was a rousing call to solidarity and peace. Thoroughly modern in the issues it addresses, and akin to a modern protest song, it does not skimp on poetical eloquence and beauty. An invigorating yet gentle exposition on the means of navigating the threats of tyranny, corruption and violent suppression without loss of humanity, Shelley displays the best of his art, his intellect and his benevolence.
August 29, 2020
Pretty tight ngl.
The poem is split really into two parts.
1. A brutal critique of British (and really general) politicians with incredible imagery.
2. Mother earth giving a super heated socialist speech speech to the people.
Both parts are sick.
“ye are many, they are few”: just cool phrasing
The poem is split really into two parts.
1. A brutal critique of British (and really general) politicians with incredible imagery.
2. Mother earth giving a super heated socialist speech speech to the people.
Both parts are sick.
“ye are many, they are few”: just cool phrasing
October 2, 2013
Shelley's poetic response to the 1819 massacre at St Peter's Field Manchester by the British Government...
February 20, 2023
*4.5 stars*
read for uni
This poem is essentially Marxism before Marxism was even founded. Through its subversion of the Masque, an aristocratic form of entertainment that implied good = rich and poor = bad, the poem beautifully comments on the state of affairs in Britain at the time (particularly the Peterloo Massacre of 1819) from a removed distance (Shelley starts by reminding us that he is 'asleep in Italy' whilst this strife is occurring). Through the personification of Murder, Fraud and Hypocrisy, and their association with the ruling classes, Shelley makes a strong argument for socialism, and the uprising of the oppressed working classes against those who keep them fettered. However, through his exploration of 'anarchy' as an equally flawed character, he appears to argue for non-violence; his ideas of revolution and liberty do not advocate for violent ends, instead they warn against the effects of such methods of overthrow. This really reminded me of why I love Shelley so much - his poetry is both exquisitely crafted and overtly political, reflecting his Romanticism and passionate support of the people. Another day, another slay. (although he would not agree with slaying as a solution to oppression)
This poem has had unrivalled influence on politics and philosophy since it was published, and I can see why. Percy Shelley's talent, but also his deep sympathy for those exploited by the British establishment, is completely on show.
'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.'
(stanza 38)
rating as of 16/02/2023: 4.5 stars
read for uni
This poem is essentially Marxism before Marxism was even founded. Through its subversion of the Masque, an aristocratic form of entertainment that implied good = rich and poor = bad, the poem beautifully comments on the state of affairs in Britain at the time (particularly the Peterloo Massacre of 1819) from a removed distance (Shelley starts by reminding us that he is 'asleep in Italy' whilst this strife is occurring). Through the personification of Murder, Fraud and Hypocrisy, and their association with the ruling classes, Shelley makes a strong argument for socialism, and the uprising of the oppressed working classes against those who keep them fettered. However, through his exploration of 'anarchy' as an equally flawed character, he appears to argue for non-violence; his ideas of revolution and liberty do not advocate for violent ends, instead they warn against the effects of such methods of overthrow. This really reminded me of why I love Shelley so much - his poetry is both exquisitely crafted and overtly political, reflecting his Romanticism and passionate support of the people. Another day, another slay. (although he would not agree with slaying as a solution to oppression)
This poem has had unrivalled influence on politics and philosophy since it was published, and I can see why. Percy Shelley's talent, but also his deep sympathy for those exploited by the British establishment, is completely on show.
'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.'
(stanza 38)
rating as of 16/02/2023: 4.5 stars
August 27, 2025
İngiliz Edebiyatı'nın güçlü ve genç kalemi Shelley'nin dönemin trajik olayları çerçevesinde kaleme aldığı ve politik olarak yerdiği 91 kıtalık şiiri. Pasif direniş sembolü haline gelmiş bir gencin adaletsizlik ve hükümet şiddeti karşısında sesini çıkarması bu şiir. Etkileyici olduğunu şüphesiz bir eser. O yıllarda bunu verebilmesi ve bunu edebi anlamda icra edip sesini duyurabilmesi ta bu zamana kadar ulaşmasına neden oldu. Shelley, bütünüyle ilgimi çeken bir yazar. Kısacık hayatına sığdırabildiklerini takdir ediyorum.
Okuduğum basımda orijinal metin ile çevirisi yan yana yer alıyor. Çoğu kıtada çevirileri beğenemedim maalesef. Başarılı kıtaları kadar epey baştan savma olanlar da mevcuttu, net bir şekilde söyleyebilirim bunu.
Bana hatırlattığı bir başka dize ise şöyle oldu:
"Çoklar diye korkmadık, azız diye çekinmedik."
Okuduğum basımda orijinal metin ile çevirisi yan yana yer alıyor. Çoğu kıtada çevirileri beğenemedim maalesef. Başarılı kıtaları kadar epey baştan savma olanlar da mevcuttu, net bir şekilde söyleyebilirim bunu.
Bana hatırlattığı bir başka dize ise şöyle oldu:
"Çoklar diye korkmadık, azız diye çekinmedik."
August 28, 2020
The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester: by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Gorgeous rhythmic flow
“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.”
..
'Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants' use to dwell
So that ye for them are made
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will bent
To their defence and nourishment.
Gorgeous rhythmic flow
“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.”
..
'Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants' use to dwell
So that ye for them are made
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will bent
To their defence and nourishment.
February 23, 2023
shelley was the voice of political upheaval and change when people didn’t believe poets to walk with the general community. the poem personifies actions to allude at how humans are a culmination of their emotions, along with grotesque imagery in juxtaposition with nature symbolism. the poem is filled with comparisons. however, there is a disconnect between poet and the intended readers, which is intentional as percy shelley was in england during the movements.
July 13, 2024
This short humanitarian poem was occasioned by the so called "Peterloo Massacre", a defining moment in Manchester's history. The main interest of the poem, which expresses Shelley's revolutionary political views and indicts Castlereagh's administration, lies in the incorporation of the thought into the Philosophical View of Reform. I was introduced to this text in 1998 while doing a project on Shelley.
October 28, 2024
I might've been reading this with red tinged eyes but all I got out of this was "Screw the government." Usually this kind of nonviolent resistance isn't my cup of tea, more inclined to physical resistance, but I can see the appeal.
November 16, 2020
An absolutely beautiful poem by Shelley, possibly one of my favorites. The rhyming in his poem adds to the understanding and has an important message for resistance: "Ye are many--they are few"
March 9, 2021
[Romanticism] Logging this in recognition of reading Mr Shelley this week, this poem is insanely good. Dr Emily was correct - Percy Shelley, MFRP (Master Formalist of the Romantic Period)
Read
August 17, 2021Shelley’s searing response to the Peterloo massacre. Angry and beautiful.
January 8, 2022
Read for school
August 18, 2022
A political ballad best read in Manc - a dreadful scene to reflect upon and contemporary forboding re: Public Order Bill ad rem.
May 19, 2023
every single time this poem makes me tear up
June 13, 2025
Brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique
August 12, 2025
One of my favorite poems of all time. Truly incredible in so many ways.
October 6, 2025
It is one of his best poems yet. I have only read two, but this one is tough!
January 20, 2026
3.5
head empty no thoughts it was good
head empty no thoughts it was good
July 19, 2020
An interesting view & poem describing a position of non-violence in response to the Peterloo Massacre (1819). Shelley uses personifications rather than characters to highlight his viewpoint: “Ye are many—they are few!”
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