.
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![The Massacre of Peterloo! LCCN2009632742 | by Fæ]()
Shelley said, seeing this as life’s truest wealth.
In Shelley’s world the “natural order
Has no place for tyrants” --
Neutering the beauty of the earth,
With all its inspirational beings:
Plants, animals, humans,
And elemental presences.
He was an atheist
Of a most particular kind
For his own spirit is ever present
In the poetry that he envisioned
To be “the interpenetration
“Of a diviner nature
“Through our own.”
He saw this poetry’s footsteps as being like
“Those of the wind over the sea
“Which the coming calm erases,
“And whose traces remain
“In the wrinkled sand which paves it.”
In just such a fashion Shelley’s now etched
Into the wrinkled neurology of the brain,
And he’ll rise to the surface in a trice
As the oppressed take up his chant:
‘We are many, they are few.’
These potent phrases were coined by him
After the Peterloo massacre where
Crowds of Manchester demonstrators
Protesting against cruel and unfair conditions
Were cut down by a Tory government --
Women and children included.
‘We are many, they are few’
Those who’ve never heard of Shelley
Know this to be true…
True for the Ninety Nine Percent who occupied Wall Street
To shame the One percent
Counting their algorithmic wealth In that cold-hearted gully;
True for those in Tahrir Square
At the height of the Arab Spring
Who adopted this as their slogan;
True for the two million who marched
Against the impending war in Iraq
With Shelley’s line displayed upon their banners.
Here’s how Byron invoked his dead friend
As he stood beside Shelley’s drowned body,
On the shores of Lerici on the Ligurian coast,
To watch its twenty-nine-year-old flesh burning:
“He was the most gentle, the most amiable,
“And least worldly minded person
“I ever met. Disinterested beyond all other men.
“And possessing a degree of genius
“Joined to simplicity
“As rare as it is admirable.
“He had formed to himself
“A beau-ideal
“Of all that is fine, high-minded and noble.
“He acted up to this ideal to the very letter.”
Shelley devised formulae for man’s improvement:
Poetic equations to enlighten those
Weighed down by enervating shibboleths.
He saw how, “The great man’s comfort equals the poor man’s woe”,
And how war makes small men feel important,
And why militarized violence is quite worthless
Because, “Man has no right to kill his brother.
“It is no excuse that he does so in uniform:
“He only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Whilst laws passed in Shelley’s day are now redundant --
Consigned to unconsulted vellum scrolls --
And whilst the authorities who then held sway
Are no more than corpse-dust in the wind,
Shelley’s spirit is still legislating
For another world that’s possible.
“Government is an evil…” Shelley proclaims,
“When all men are good and wise,
“Government will of itself decay.”
He then whispers an erotic conjuration:
“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips”,
As this life-lover dances through the aether.
![The Funeral of Shelley]()
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City workers cross the Millennium Bridge over the River Thames on a foggy morning in London: photo by Toby Melville/Reuters, 2 November 2015
![A seagull flies past Westminster Bridge during a foggy day in central London, November 2, 2015. Airports across Britain suffered disruption on Monday as heavy fog led to delays and cancellations for a second day. Flights to and from London airports were being affected, while foggy conditions in the capital and across Europe were causing problems to airports around the country.REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth]()
![A seagull flies past Westminster Bridge during a foggy day in central London, November 2, 2015. Airports across Britain suffered disruption on Monday as heavy fog led to delays and cancellations for a second day. Flights to and from London airports were being affected, while foggy conditions in the capital and across Europe were causing problems to airports around the country.REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth]()
A seagull flies past Westminster Bridge during a foggy day in central London today. Airports across Britain suffered disruption on Monday as heavy fog led to delays and cancellations for a second day. Flights to and from London airports were being affected, while foggy conditions in the capital and across Europe were causing problems to airports around the country: photo by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters, 2 November 2015
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Violence as anti-capitalist "Million Mask March" hits London: image via Agence France-Presse, 5 November 2015
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Percy Bysshe Shelley: image viaOxford University, 2015
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Violence as anti-capitalist "Million Mask March" hits London: image via Agence France-Presse, 5 November 2015
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Queen Elizabeth II greets actor Angelina Jolie to present her with the insignia of an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, in the 1844 room at Buckingham Palace, London: photo by Anthony Devlin / PA, 11 October 2014
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To Henry Hunt, Esqr. as chairman of the meeting assembled on St. Peter's Field, Manchester on the 16th. of August, 1819. On August 16 1819, the day now known as the Peterloo Massacre, thousands of peaceful protestors for parliamentary reform gathered at St Peter’s Square, Manchester. Ten to twenty were killed and hundreds injured as the meeting was violently broken up by the Manchester Yeomanry, a force of volunteer soldiers. This print is one of several commemorative items produced in the aftermath of the event. It describes the Yeomanry as a 'brutal armed force' who carried out 'a wanton and furious attack' on the protestors.: print, anonymous, 1819 (The British Museum)
![Throng | by psd]()
Peterloo massacre (detail). On 16 August 1819, a large political meeting at St Peter's Field, Manchester, in support of parliamentary reform was charged by horseback troops with sabres. 11 people died immediately and others died later:detail from commemorative handkerchief, courtesy of People's History Museum, Manchester; image by Paul Downeyvia The Guardian, 17 May 2011
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![Peterloo Massacre, print published by Richard Carlile, 1 Oct 1819 | by archivesplus]()
![16th August 1819 - Peterloo Massacre, Manchester | by Bradford Timeline]()
16 August 1819 -- Peterloo Massacre, Manchester: image by Bradford Timeline, 23 February 2015
![m07600 Peterloo Incident in a theatre, 1819 | by archivesplus]()
Peterloo Incident in a theatre: Richard Dighton, 1819 (from Annals of Manchester); image by Manchester Archives, 15 August 2011
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Looking back at Queen Elizabeth's reign as she becomes UK's longest-serving monarch: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 9 September 2015
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Oxford Street, in London, is now one of the most polluted in the world.: image via NYT Opinion @nytopinion, 6 November 2015
![http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/James_Abbot_McNeill_Whistler_009.jpg/1280px-James_Abbot_McNeill_Whistler_009.jpg]()
![The Funeral Of Shelley | by poetictouch]()
The Peterloo Massacre (forcible dispersal of a reform meeting in St Peter's Fields, Manchester). On August 16 1819, the day now known as the Peterloo Massacre, thousands of peaceful protestors for parliamentary reform had gathered at St Peter’s Square, Manchester. Ten to twenty were killed and hundreds injured as the meeting was violently broken up by the Manchester Yeomanry, a force of volunteer soldiers. This vividly coloured print is one of several commemorative items produced in the aftermath of the event: colour print, anonymous, London, 1819 (UK National Archives / British Library)
Percy Bysshe Shelley: England in 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, -- mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes 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 may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): England in 1819, 1819
The Massacre of Peterloo! or a Specimen of English Liberty. Print showing the Manchester Yeomanry slashing and beating a crowd gathered to demand parliamentary reform as the Riot Act is read from a window.: artist unknown, 1819, etching and aquatint, 25.9 x 36.4 cm (British Cartoon Prints Collection, Library of Congress)
Heathcote Williams: ForShelley on the 4thAugust, His Birthday
“Poetry sees the starlight smile of children”Shelley said, seeing this as life’s truest wealth.
In Shelley’s world the “natural order
Has no place for tyrants” --
Neutering the beauty of the earth,
With all its inspirational beings:
Plants, animals, humans,
And elemental presences.
He was an atheist
Of a most particular kind
For his own spirit is ever present
In the poetry that he envisioned
To be “the interpenetration
“Of a diviner nature
“Through our own.”
He saw this poetry’s footsteps as being like
“Those of the wind over the sea
“Which the coming calm erases,
“And whose traces remain
“In the wrinkled sand which paves it.”
In just such a fashion Shelley’s now etched
Into the wrinkled neurology of the brain,
And he’ll rise to the surface in a trice
As the oppressed take up his chant:
‘We are many, they are few.’
These potent phrases were coined by him
After the Peterloo massacre where
Crowds of Manchester demonstrators
Protesting against cruel and unfair conditions
Were cut down by a Tory government --
Women and children included.
‘We are many, they are few’
Those who’ve never heard of Shelley
Know this to be true…
True for the Ninety Nine Percent who occupied Wall Street
To shame the One percent
Counting their algorithmic wealth In that cold-hearted gully;
True for those in Tahrir Square
At the height of the Arab Spring
Who adopted this as their slogan;
True for the two million who marched
Against the impending war in Iraq
With Shelley’s line displayed upon their banners.
Here’s how Byron invoked his dead friend
As he stood beside Shelley’s drowned body,
On the shores of Lerici on the Ligurian coast,
To watch its twenty-nine-year-old flesh burning:
“He was the most gentle, the most amiable,
“And least worldly minded person
“I ever met. Disinterested beyond all other men.
“And possessing a degree of genius
“Joined to simplicity
“As rare as it is admirable.
“He had formed to himself
“A beau-ideal
“Of all that is fine, high-minded and noble.
“He acted up to this ideal to the very letter.”
Shelley devised formulae for man’s improvement:
Poetic equations to enlighten those
Weighed down by enervating shibboleths.
He saw how, “The great man’s comfort equals the poor man’s woe”,
And how war makes small men feel important,
And why militarized violence is quite worthless
Because, “Man has no right to kill his brother.
“It is no excuse that he does so in uniform:
“He only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Whilst laws passed in Shelley’s day are now redundant --
Consigned to unconsulted vellum scrolls --
And whilst the authorities who then held sway
Are no more than corpse-dust in the wind,
Shelley’s spirit is still legislating
For another world that’s possible.
“Government is an evil…” Shelley proclaims,
“When all men are good and wise,
“Government will of itself decay.”
He then whispers an erotic conjuration:
“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips”,
As this life-lover dances through the aether.
Heathcote Williams: For Shelley on the 4th August, His Birthday via International Times, 4 August 2016
The Funeral of Shelley: Louis Édouard Fournier, 1889 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool)
The unconsummated sacrifice
The wind was wrong, the idea was silly, no one knew what they were doing
A greenish light glowered from the flat darkening sea
City workers cross the Millennium Bridge over the River Thames on a foggy morning in London: photo by Toby Melville/Reuters, 2 November 2015
City workers cross the Millennium Bridge over the River Thames on a foggy morning in London: photo by Toby Melville/Reuters, 2 November 2015
A seagull flies past Westminster Bridge during a foggy day in central London today. Airports across Britain suffered disruption on Monday as heavy fog led to delays and cancellations for a second day. Flights to and from London airports were being affected, while foggy conditions in the capital and across Europe were causing problems to airports around the country: photo by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters, 2 November 2015
A seagull flies past Westminster Bridge during a foggy day in central London today. Airports across Britain suffered disruption on Monday as heavy fog led to delays and cancellations for a second day. Flights to and from London airports were being affected, while foggy conditions in the capital and across Europe were causing problems to airports around the country: photo by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters, 2 November 2015
Violence as anti-capitalist "Million Mask March" hits London: image via Agence France-Presse, 5 November 2015
Percy Bysshe Shelley: illustration by Culture Club, 2015
Protesters clash with police at anti-government #MillionMaskMarch demo: image via BBC News verified account @BBCNews, 2 November 2015
Percy Bysshe Shelley: image viaOxford University, 2015
Remember, remember the 5th of November. Guy Fawkes night.: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 5 November 2015
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Violence as anti-capitalist "Million Mask March" hits London: image via Agence France-Presse, 5 November 2015
![Embedded image permalink]()
Protesters clash with police at anti-government #MillionMaskMarch demo: image via BBC News verified account @BBCNews, 25 November 2015
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Noticed on why home from #MillionMaskMarch. Seems apt.: image via Damien Gayle @damiengayle, 5 November 2015
Violence as anti-capitalist "Million Mask March" hits London: image via Agence France-Presse, 5 November 2015
Protesters clash with police at anti-government #MillionMaskMarch demo: image via BBC News verified account @BBCNews, 25 November 2015
Noticed on why home from #MillionMaskMarch. Seems apt.: image via Damien Gayle @damiengayle, 5 November 2015
Violence as anti-capitalist "Million Mask March" hits London: image via Agence France-Presse, 5 November 2015
The #MillionMaskMarch kettle: image via Damien Gayle @damiengayle, 5 November 2015
UK - Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Prince Charles attend the annual Braemar Gathering. By @acbphoto #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffard, 6 September 2015
Good morning. Yesterday The Queen attended the 200th #Braemar gathering. I use to also enjoyed attending the games: image via The Royal Butler @TheRoyalButler, 6 September 2015
Queen Elizabeth II greets actor Angelina Jolie to present her with the insignia of an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, in the 1844 room at Buckingham Palace, London: photo by Anthony Devlin / PA , 11 October 2014
Queen Elizabeth II greets actor Angelina Jolie to present her with the insignia of an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, in the 1844 room at Buckingham Palace, London: photo by Anthony Devlin / PA, 11 October 2014
To Henry Hunt, Esqr. as chairman of the meeting assembled on St. Peter's Field, Manchester on the 16th. of August, 1819. On August 16 1819, the day now known as the Peterloo Massacre, thousands of peaceful protestors for parliamentary reform gathered at St Peter’s Square, Manchester. Ten to twenty were killed and hundreds injured as the meeting was violently broken up by the Manchester Yeomanry, a force of volunteer soldiers. This print is one of several commemorative items produced in the aftermath of the event. It describes the Yeomanry as a 'brutal armed force' who carried out 'a wanton and furious attack' on the protestors.: print, anonymous, 1819 (The British Museum)
Peterloo massacre (detail). On 16 August 1819, a large political meeting at St Peter's Field, Manchester, in support of parliamentary reform was charged by horseback troops with sabres. 11 people died immediately and others died later:detail from commemorative handkerchief, courtesy of People's History Museum, Manchester; image by Paul Downeyvia The Guardian, 17 May 2011
Peterloo massacre. On 16 August 1819, a large political meeting at St Peter's Field, Manchester, in support of parliamentary reform was charged by horseback troops with sabres. 11 people died immediately and others died later.:commemorative handkerchief, courtesy of People's History Museum, Manchester; image by Paul Downey via The Guardian, 17 May 2011
To Henry Hunt, Esq., as chairman of the meeting assembled in St. Peter's Field, Manchester, sixteenth day of August, 1819, and to the female Reformers of Manchester and the adjacent towns who were exposed to and suffered from the wanton and fiendish attack made on them by that brutal armed force, the Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry, this plate is dedicated by their fellow labourer, Richard Carlile: a coloured engraving that depicts the Peterloo Massacre (military suppression of a demonstration in Manchester, England by cavalry charge on 16 August, with loss of life). All the poles from which banners are flying have Phrygian caps or liberty caps on top. Not all the details strictly accord with contemporary descriptions; the banner the woman is holding should read: Female Reformers of Roynton -- "Let us die like men and not be sold like slaves": hand coloured engraving, Richard Carlile (1790–1843), 1 October 1819(Manchester Library Services)
Peterloo Massacre: print published by Richard Carlile, 1 October 1819; image by Manchester Archives+, 15 August 2011
16 August 1819 -- Peterloo Massacre, Manchester: image by Bradford Timeline, 23 February 2015
Peterloo Incident in a theatre: Richard Dighton, 1819 (from Annals of Manchester); image by Manchester Archives, 15 August 2011
Looking back at Queen Elizabeth's reign as she becomes UK's longest-serving monarch: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 9 September 2015
Oxford Street, in London, is now one of the most polluted in the world.: image via NYT Opinion @nytopinion, 6 November 2015
London Nocturne in Grey and Gold: Snow in Chelsea: James Abbot McNeillWhistler, 1876 (Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts)
The unconsummated sacrifice
The fire would not catch, the day was warm, the stench soon became awful
Particles still hang in the air
The Funeral of Shelley: Louis Édouard Fournier (1857-1917), 1889 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool); image via poetictouch, 15 September 2014