Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

The Mask of Anarchy

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Percy Bysshe Shelley

(English poet of nature and human liberty, 1792–1822, whose whole life was a cry for beauty and freedom. He died in obloquy and neglect, and today is known as “the Poets’ Poet”)

MEN of England, Heirs of Glory,

Heroes of unwritten story,

Nurslings of one mighty mother,

Hopes of her, and one another!

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.

What is Freedom! Ye can tell

That which Slavery is too well,

For its very name has grown

To an echo of your own.

’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.

’Tis to see your children weak

With their mothers pine and peak,

When the winter winds are bleak:—

They are dying whilst I speak.

’Tis to hunger for such diet

As the rich man in his riot

Casts to the fat dogs that lie

Surfeiting beneath his eye.

’Tis to be a slave in soul,

And to hold no strong control

Over your own wills, but be

All that others make of ye.