Reading and Language 22 Sep 2006 03:28 pm
Ringing ever more true
Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other’s hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.– Percy Bysshe Shelley, from “Queen Mab”
on 22 Sep 2006 at 3:36 pm 1.mallard said …
The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Sometimes I forget what total punk rockers the romantic poets were.
(Or am I biased toward my own youth culture?)
on 22 Sep 2006 at 8:27 pm 2.Cam Sculpin said …
Oh, yeah. They’ve got that going on, and a half. Also, looking at Shelley’s emphasis in “Queen Mab” on reason as source of virtue, and reading the passage where he says
“…the unconquered powers
Of precedent and custom interpose
Between a king and virtue.”
makes me see them as having kinship with Buddhists, too:
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it.”