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Sonnet: England in 1819

Lines:14Movement:Romanticism
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flowThrough 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 preyMakes 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 mayBurst, to illumine our tempestuous day.