Thank you very much for your kind message, Alesha. I'm so pleased that you find my analyses interesting. Yes, Shelley was certainly passionate about the things he believed in.

@@DrOctaviaCox I am from India But can understand because your teaching is amazing ♥️

How wonderful! - I can't think of much better than a home filled with books!

Many thanks, David - much appreciated.

Indeed, like all great poems it resonates with today's society and if you don't confine it to the uk, ..old mad despised king (president) , princes the dregs of their dull race, ( a paedophile, a woke hypocrite etc.) . and thank you for pointing out that Shelley was a deeply spiritual poet. Really enjoyed the analysis, Helen Featherston

I was not familiar with this poem, and it was good to hear your detailed analysis and context-setting. I think "Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow" means that the "leeches" drop off, having sated themselves to the point of being "blind in blood", without the need for their victim to strike a blow - in other words, the ruling class will (or may!) destroy themselves by their own degeneracy, without the need for a violent revolution (the French Revolution and the Terror being still in living memory). The poem seems a bit...hesitant, to me - in keeping with Shelley's waiting to see how the country would react. As you say, there is a faint hope, as if the poet says "surely THIS is the last straw!", but the image of a "Phantom" - even a "glorious" one - bursting from a grave, doesn't seem quite the revolutionary rallying cry one might expect. It sounds more like the ruling class reinventing itself, in a somewhat less brutal form - which is kind of what happened. Only twenty years later, after Shelley's death, Queen Victoria's accession to the throne and her renewal of the image of the monarchy, and the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, it was quite safe for Mary Shelley (now a respectable widow and literary figure, not just that mad feminist's daughter, who ran off with the married atheistic poet) to see it through to publication.

I agreed with all your reading of the poem. I also think, like a previous commenter, that there might be a reference to Daniel 12.4, 10. Daniel is given a prophecy, then told, ‘But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end… None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.’ The picture is of a message from God that will be sealed for a time, i.e. no-one will understand it until ‘the time of the end’. And then only the wise. In the poem it could be the Christian religion that is ‘a book sealed’ - to the religious leaders, I suppose. They don’t really understand its message. That boils down to the Bible being sealed to them, as you said, because the message of the Christian religion is found in the Bible. There could be an implication that they aren’t wise. Or he might just be using the saying ‘a sealed book’, I guess! (Which was possibly based on Daniel.) I do think Shelley has a slight nerve criticising the religious leaders when he was not a Christian himself. Although if they failed to condemn the Peterloo massacre he probably had a point. There is a lot in the Bible about not oppressing the poor.

Ha! - That Byron does have a way with a rhyme! Yes, I think "Rulers" includes the whole lot of them. Leaving it opaque means that it does not exclude anyone. The Mask of Anarchy is a fabulous poem - also written in response to the Peterloo Massacre (and also too hot to print in 1819 - it wasn't printed until 1832) - with many evocative passages about political resistance, such as the wonderful closing triplet: Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many - they are few. (ll.370-2)

I would like to see an analysis of ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ too. I remember reading part of that in my A level History textbook.

Thank you for these illuminating observations, Carole. Your point about knowledge (or understanding, or open-eyed-ness, or awareness... whatever we might call it) being misunderstood until the right time is apt. I get the sense that Shelley felt that now _was_ the right time!

Percy was not just an atheist but a public atheist which at such time was quite perilous. He clearly took his atheism very seriously. So, I don’t regard the phantom as being even slightly religious. The phantom was revolution. The type of revolution found within The French Revolution. The revolution of over-throwing the monarchy.

🎯💯

Sadly I'm not sure the abuse of power ever goes out of fashion!