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First posted on 18 December 2020
Updated on 7 December 2024
“The night might seem endless, but dawn is surely near, and with it, the promise of light.”- Hafez, the Persian sage, poet and philosopher of love
The winter solstice is the day of the year with the fewest hours of daylight. In the northern hemisphere this date falls in December every year. In 2024 the winter solstice will occur on Saturday 21 December.
‘This image, a composite of dozens of photographs taken by Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2021 entrant György Soponyai, shows the changing arcs of the Sun throughout the year. The smallest arc at the bottom marks the winter solstice, and the largest one at the top the summer solstice. The band in the middle is the 'equinox', with roughly equal hours of day and night.’- Photo via Royal Museums Greenwich
Welcome, Yule!
Happy Winter Solstice!
Photo:amazon
The Shortest Day
'And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us — listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year. Welcome, Yule!'-Susan Cooper
‘The two great celestial milestones of the year, the Summer and Winter Solstices, are perhaps humanity’s most ancient ritual observances. People paused at these times to reflect upon the journey of life, with its trials, blessings, hopes and promise.’- Paul Winter*
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”- Annie Dillard
'In a sense, Winter Solstice is a turning point in the battle of dark versus light.'
This is how the sunrise on Winter Solstice looked like in Newgrange in 2019. Photo: John Lalor/Via RTE
‘Celebrating Our Journey With the Sun’*
‘To live at all is miracle enough’
The Shortest Day calls us to hope beyond despair, as days get longer, lighter and warmer,
the return of colour and beauty lifts the spirits
Tuesday 21 December is the 2021 Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year for people living in the Northern hemisphere.
The Solstice —derived from the Latin solstitium meaning standing sun — marks the moment the sun shines at its most southern point.,
and for centuries the Solstice has been recognised as a time of celebration and rebirth.-Photo: Medium
‘The winter solstice, with the rebirth of the sun, offers a time for healing and hope, a time to celebrate community and relatedness,
and a time to honour the diversity and the unity of this great cornucopia of life on Earth.’- Yale Forum on Religion & Ecology
‘Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.’― J.K.Rowling
‘If the last 200 years have been shaped by industrialization, materialism and disparity, may the coming era be characterized by regeneration, stewardship and sharing. Decades from now, we may look back on this year with new understanding – as a great pause that seeded deeper awareness and new capacities.’
I wish to mark and celebrate the solstice by sharing a poem that says a great deal about our place on Earth.
Words That Inspire: ‘The Wild Geese’ by Wendell Berry, which paints a colorful image of Earth's bounty, inspiring the beloved poet and farmer to be thankful that all we need is around us.
Photo:pinterest
‘Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer’s end. In time’s maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed’s marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.’
Yes, indeed. It is so very true: ‘What we need is here’.
In the last couple of years we all have faced and experienced unprecedented difficulties, challenges and uncertainties. But the year has also been laced and interwoven with inspiration and hope, resilience and kindness, when we all have discovered the power of the common good.
COVID-19 and its subsequent variants have shown us our vulnerabilities, as well as our strength and our humanity. It has also shown us that once and for all, we are all in it together. The year has also shown us that viruses and infections are borderless, as are love and kindness.
Photo:AtmosFX
For many of us, the GCGI family, this year has been the year where we came together not in despair, but in hope. We connected with each other and we began to value the values of togetherness, love, and sharing more than ever before.
We came together at Dawn, in poetry and literature, and gathered together in Mother Nature, although all in virtual reality, but, nonetheless, we were together in spirit, as love knows no borders.
One thing that COVID-19 has taught me is that:
‘The most precious thing in life is life itself’
All in all, in the eloquent words of Mervyn Peake, we all discovered that indeed, ‘To Live is Miracle Enough.’
Painting by Simon Drew- PENGUINS TO LIVE AT ALL IS MIRACLE ENOUGH
‘To live at all is miracle enough.
The doom of nations is another thing.
Here in my hammering blood-pulse is my proof.
Let every painter paint and poet sing
And all the sons of music ply their trade;
Machines are weaker than a beetle’s wing.
Swung out of sunlight into cosmic shade,
Come what come may the imagination’s heart
Is constellation high and can’t be weighed.
Nor greed nor fear can tear our faith apart
When every heart-beat hammers out the proof
That life itself is miracle enough.’ -Mervyn Peake, To Live is Miracle Enough
…...
Whilst reading one of my favorite journals-KOSMOS- the following passage very much resonated with me, which I would like to share with you:
‘As you may know, a Great Conjunction occurs exactly at the solstice December 21st between the planets Saturn and Jupiter. Their light will appear to merge as a bright beacon on the southern horizon. In the northern hemisphere, many associate the return of light at the solstice with the celebrations of Yuletide, Christmas, Hanukkah, Soyal for the Hopi, Dong Zhi in China, and many others.
This particular planetary conjunction is said to be the start of a new 200-year cycle. We welcome the symbolism of renewal, rebirth and the return of light to the world.
If the last 200 years have been shaped by industrialization, materialism and disparity, may the coming era be characterized by regeneration, stewardship and sharing. Decades from now, we may look back on this year with new understanding – as a great pause that seeded deeper awareness and new capacities.
Truly, the present quality of time is like no other in our living memory. Yet, life evolved only once on Earth billions of years ago, and our ancestors passed through many portals of near extinction and rebirth. We are the collective inheritors of their wondrous resilience, skillfulness, and love.’- KOSMOS
Illustration by Sara Mulvanny
In conclusion, GCGI welcomes you wholeheartedly as we chronicle this continuing journey of Love&Hope, when we take actions in the interest of the common good.
Annie and I are grateful to all those who have journeyed through this year with us, in various ways. Friendship, love, caring and solidarity are ever more precious in these uncertain times! Thank you for being who you are.
……
And now I wish to share with you something from the land of my birth, remembering my childhood
and the festivities around the longest night, the shortest day, Shab-e-Yalda.
Shab-e Yalda: When Light Shines and Where Goodness, Beauty and Wisdom Prevails
'The story of Yalda may be interpreted as a tale of courage and effort during darkness, a triumph
of light and human warmth that ultimately causes the spring to bloom in hearts.'
Shab-e-Yalda - an ancient winter solstice celebration that commemorates the triumph of Mithra
Ancient Persians believed that evil forces were dominant on the longest night of the year and that the next day
belonged to the Lord of Wisdom, Ahura Mazda.
‘Because Shab-e Yalda is the longest and darkest night, it has become to symbolise many things in Persian poetry; separation from a beloved one, loneliness and waiting. After Shab-e Yalda a transformation takes place - the waiting is over, light shines and goodness prevails.'
'The sight of you each morning is a New Year
Any night of your departure is the eve of Yalda' (Sa'adi)
'With all my pains, there is still the hope of recovery
Like the eve of Yalda, there will finally be an end' (Sa'adi)
Continue to read and be inspired: Happy Shab-e Yalda
……
Selected related reading from our archive:
The healing power of ‘Dawn’ at this time of coronavirus crisis
Finding sanctuary in poetry during lockdown
Embrace the Spirituality of the Autumn Equinox and Discover What it Means to be Human
On the 250th Birthday of William Wordsworth Let Nature be our Wisest Teacher
The Sweetness of Being Human: ‘We have all of us one human heart.’
What a blissful day it was visiting "The loveliest spot that man hath ever found"
The prophetic legacy of John Ruskin: A Man ahead of his time
“Now comes good sailing” whilst nature and simple living were his solace
Christmas in the time of COVID: Let Love and Kindness be Your Everlasting Gifts
......
May you find joy in the simple pleasures of life and may the light of the holiday season
fill your heart with the hope for a better world
“…there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.” —Ecclesiastes 3:12
......
*‘Celebrating Our Journey With the Sun’
Paul Winter’s 42nd Annual Winter Solstice Celebration
For the past 40 years, Paul Winter’s Winter Solstice performances have brought people together to welcome the return of the sun and the birth of a new year. Set in the extraordinary acoustics and titanic dimensions of the world’s largest gothic cathedral, New York’s St. John the Divine, the event has grown into an extravaganza of music and dance, a contemporary celebration of renewal. This year will feature a unique version of the event, tailored to COVID times.
LEARN MORE AND WATCH THE WINTER SOLSTICE SPECIAL – “EVERYBODY UNDER THE SUN”
......
A must-read book
'This text gives meaning not just to Christmas, but to the whole winter season. Folklore expert John Matthews traces the history behind many of the sacred traditions of the holiday season and provides refreshing and practical suggestions for celebrating the winter solstice as a joyous, life-affirming, spritual festival. Matthews explores the surprising multicultural origins of Santa Claus, the Yule Log, carolling, mistletoe and the Christmas tree. Many of these are Pagan in origin: the winter solstice sees the rebirth of the year and the return of the sun and the sun god after the darkness of winter. The traditional meanings of the twelve days of Christmas are explored, and practical ways of celebrating each of them given. This intertwining of myth and religion partly explains the depth and significance of the Christmas seasonal celebrations. John Matthews brings myth and spiritual significance to life in this text. He revives old traditions and suggests new ones to help you celebrate the passing of the winter season and the coming of spring.'
But this Book HERE
Photo:amazon
‘In this seasonal treasure, Newbery Medalist Susan Cooper's beloved poem heralds the winter solstice, illuminated by Caldecott Honoree Carson Ellis's strikingly resonant illustrations.
So the shortest day came,
and the year died . . .
As the sun set on the shortest day of the year, early people would gather to prepare for the long night ahead. They built fires and lit candles. They played music, bringing their own light to the darkness, while wondering if the sun would ever rise again. Written for a theatrical production that has become a ritual in itself, Susan Cooper's poem "The Shortest Day" captures the magic behind the returning of the light, the yearning for traditions that connect us with generations that have gone before -- and the hope for peace that we carry into the future. Richly illustrated by Carson Ellis with a universality that spans the centuries, this beautiful book evokes the joy and community found in the ongoing mystery of life when we celebrate light, thankfulness, and festivity at a time of rebirth. Welcome Yule!’
Buy this book HERE
See also
‘‘The Shortest Day: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Presence with the Passage of Time, Our Ancient Relationship with the Sun, and the Cycles of Life’
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Teachers as Poets: The Architects of the Transformational Change
Reclaim Your Heart and Discover Your Soul
Nota bene
‘We become teachers for the reasons of the heart.
But many of us lose heart as time goes by.
How can we take heart, alone and together,
So we can give heart to our students and our world,
Which is what good teachers do?'-THE HEART OF A TEACHER
‘Humanity is at the core of what a poem is. It is meaning, empathy, revelation, inversion, dissidence, passion, and surprise: poetry is what happens in the space between logic and chaos.’- Joelle Taylor, poet, playwright and author
Whilst the forces of fakery, arrogance, loneliness, violence, indifference, rejection, physical and mental disabilities, injustice, and inhumanity are real and cannot be denied, so are the powers of human authenticity, generosity, kindness, empathy, humility, dignity, understanding, courage, and community that are rising up to meet them, challenging them, providing better paths to this journey we call life.
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Poet for the Common Good Who Spoke Truth to Power
N.B. Not long ago, I posted a Blog, In Search of Meaning and Purpose: The Poets' Guide to Economics, shedding light on how to humanise economics and the economists in order to build a better world.
Today, I have tasked myself to shed light on political poetry, on ‘The Poets’ Guide to Politics’, if you will, to explore the political power of poetry and its capacity to inspire social change. To achieve this goal, I have allowed myself to be inspired and guided by the political poetry and poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who remains ‘one of the most celebrated and influential figures of the Romantic era in English literature. He is recognised for his passionate, lyrical poetry, often infused with intense emotion and radical political ideals. Shelley's work explores themes of love, beauty, nature, and the pursuit of freedom and justice’, all amongst the missing values in this chaotic world of our creation.
Shelley: An Icon of Liberation
Shelley, the poet of moral and political corruption, speaking prophetically to our age
Poet As Prophet: Shelley, People’s Poet
Sociopolitical poetry: Evoking understanding, sympathy, empathy, challenging the Status Quo, and inspiring resistance, mobilisation, dialogue and collective action for social change
This painting of Shelley by William Edward West, was done days before he drowned off
the coast of Italy Credit: University of Virginia Libraries
I look forward to a day when school children, college and university students are required to study creativity and be inspired by poets, artists, mystics, musicians, sculptors, philosophers of love, and peacemakers. I look forward to a day when they start their day by reciting poetry,to bring meaning and purpose into their study, grounding them in the realities of what it means to be human. I dream of a time when their textbooks, as well as addressing how they may become good workers in the marketplace, would also speak of the need for beauty, kindness, empathy, justice, cooperation, enoughness, frugality, simplicity, friendship, fairness, community and love, on who and what we are, and what is the meaning and purpose of this journey we call life. Yes, indeed, to my mind, this is the true meaning of what a good, values-led education is all about. Carpe diem!
“…poets are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of law, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world with is called religion”.
“A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth . . . the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator.”
“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley “one of the best artists of us all; I mean in workmanship of style”-William Wordsworth
Shelly, one of Britain’s most significant political essayists,“the relentless enemy of all irresponsible authority, especially the irresponsible authority which derives from wealth and exploitation”, as Paul Foot, whose 1981 work Red Shelley helped restore the significance of Shelley’s political work, observed.
‘Living precariously as an itinerant writer, Shelley found his home instead on the radical edge of British politics, a crusader against moral and political corruption, a campaigner for republicanism and parliamentary reform, for equal rights and the abolition of slavery, for free speech and a free press, for Irish freedom and Catholic emancipation, for freedom of religion and freedom from religion.’
Shelley: Prophet of the New World
“Shall rank corruption pass unheeded by,
Shall flattery’s voice ascend the wearied sky;
And shall no patriot tear the veil away
Which hides these vices from the face of day?
Is public virtue dead? – is courage gone?”
‘No, not a description of the moral void of contemporary Britain, but lines from Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, an excoriation of the moral devastation wreaked in late Georgian Britain two centuries ago. It was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and published anonymously in 1811, in support of the radical Irish journalist Peter Finnerty, who had been imprisoned for seditious libel after accusing the Anglo-Irish politician Viscount Castlereagh of the torture and executions of Irish rebels challenging British rule.’
As Kenan Malik, writing in the Guardian to mark the bicentenary of Shelly’s passing has noted,‘ Shelley’s greatest gift was in the deftness with which he interwove the poetical and the political. Poetry had, for Shelley, of necessity to appropriate a political dimension. And politics required a poetical imagination. That was why, as Shelley put it in a celebrated line from his essay A Defence of Poetry, “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”...
‘Shelley’s first significant work – 'The Necessity of Atheism' – published in his first year at Oxford, led to his expulsion from the university and strained his relationship with his father to breaking point. Living precariously as an itinerant writer, Shelley found his home instead on the radical edge of British politics, a crusader against moral and political corruption, a campaigner for republicanism and parliamentary reform, for equal rights and the abolition of slavery, for free speech and a free press, for Irish freedom and Catholic emancipation, for freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
His political ideals were often contradictory, his revolutionary spirit clashing with his Fabian instincts for gradual, non-violent change. Yet, unlike fellow Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, Shelley never abandoned his radicalism, his disdain of authority or his celebration of the voices of working people…
‘Despised by the literary and political establishments, Shelley wrote for the working-class autodidacts for whom learning and culture were means both of elevating themselves and of challenging those in power. Fearful of the consequences, his work was suppressed by the authorities, either through direct censorship or through threatening publishers with the charge of sedition.
‘As a result, much of Shelley’s work was published only after his death. The Masque of Anarchy is perhaps the most famous political poem in the English language, written in furious anger after the Peterloo massacre of 1819, when at least 15 people were killed as cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 who had gathered to demand parliamentary reform and an extension of suffrage. Shelley sent it to his friend, the radical editor and publisher Leigh Hunt. But Hunt did not publish it, for to do so would have been to invite immediate imprisonment for sedition. Not until 1832 was the poem, with its celebrated last stanza, finally published:
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number –
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.”
In the decades that followed Shelley’s death, his poetry became an inspiration across generations and borders. Queen Mab became known as the Chartists’ Bible, read aloud at working-class meetings. The Suffragettes’ slogan, “Deeds, not words”, is taken from The Masque of Anarchy. And that final stanza has been on the lips of many who have “shaken their chains”, from striking Jewish garment workers in early 20th-century New York to protesters 80 years later in Tiananmen Square and a century later in Tahrir Square.
And most of all, perhaps, it is in his insistence that we question the claim to power of those in authority that we most need Shelley’s voice today. For, as he put it in Queen Mab:
“Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen…
… and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.”
All the above excerpts from Kenan Malik’s article.
Get to know Shelley better HERE
Read more articles and reflections on Shelley HERE
Moments of joy, inner peace, and reflection: Read Shelley’s Poems and Discover Goodness, Beauty, and Wisdom
'Percy Bysshe Shelley remains one of the most celebrated and influential figures of the Romantic era in English literature. He is recognized for his passionate, lyrical poetry, often infused with intense emotion and radical political ideals. Shelley's work explores themes of love, beauty, nature, and the pursuit of freedom and justice.
His poetry is characterized by its flowing rhythms, vibrant imagery, and exploration of philosophical and metaphysical ideas. Shelley's writing frequently challenges societal norms and embraces revolutionary concepts, reflecting the spirit of the Romantic movement's emphasis on individualism, imagination, and rebellion against tradition.
Shelley's contemporaries included other prominent Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron. These poets shared a deep connection with nature, a focus on subjective experience, and a commitment to exploring the power of human emotions. They collectively shaped the literary landscape of their time and continue to inspire generations of readers and writers with their exploration of the human condition.'
Read Shelley's Poems HERE
A timeless example of Shelley's poetry speaking truth to power
‘Anarchy in Peterloo: Shelley's poem unmasked’
‘Peterloo Massacre, Manchester, print published by Richard Carlile’/Via The Guardian
‘On 16 August 1819, a crowd of more than 50,000 gathered at St Peter's Fields outside Manchester to support parliamentary reform. The radical orator Henry Hunt was to speak in favour of widening the franchise and reforming Britain's notoriously corrupt system of political representation. Magistrates ordered the Manchester Yeomanry to disperse the demonstration. The cavalry charged the crowd, sabres drawn, and at least 15 people, including a woman and a child, were killed.
The businessman John Taylor, who had witnessed the aftermath, went on to set up the Manchester Guardian in response. It was via newspapers, almost a month later, that Percy Bysshe Shelley, living in Italy, found out about what became known as the Peterloo massacre. "The torrent of my indignation," as he put it, flowed into The Masque of Anarchy, a poem devised to be accessible to a wide readership but doomed not to reach it…
Running to 91 stanzas, the poem is a prophetic dream, an apocalyptic vision of Regency Britain and the shaky legitimacy of its ruling class. In the first part, the nation's leading politicians parade like monsters, leading the figure of Anarchy around on a white horse to trample the multitudes. In this vision, the true anarchists are Britain's rulers, who delight in fear and disorder. Anarchy's followers, who include lawyers and priests, take possession of the palace and parliament. They are challenged only by a "maniac maid" called Hope, though "she looked more like Despair"...
The Masque of Anarchy
The first nine stanzas annotated
As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.
The poem is a dream, like the dream visions in Chaucer or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Yet in the first verse we also have the sense of Shelley being woken from the unreality of his life in Italy.
I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:
Viscount Castlereagh, leader of the Tories in the Commons, was a spokesman for the harsh measures of political repression that followed the Peterloo massacre. Note that "Murder" is like Castlereagh, not the other way round: individual politicians are reduced to personifications of eternal vices.
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.
Shelley's friend Leigh Hunt praised his "union of ludicrousness with terror" – as in this blending of apocalyptic vision with pantomime.
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
Lord Eldon was lord chancellor. He decided the fate of Shelley's children by his first wife, Harriet, after her suicide – refusing Shelley custody because of his "immoral and vicious" principles. Eldon was renowned for weeping even as he pronounced the harshest of sentences.
And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.
A stanza echoed in WH Auden's Epitaph on a Tyrant: "when he cried the little children died in the streets".
Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.
Viscount Sidmouth was home secretary and defended the Peterloo massacre. He evokes shadows because he was in charge of the government's secret service, and is "clothed with the Bible" because of his apparent piety: he was an advocate of church building.
And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.
A typical Shelley list, the "spies" recalling Sidmouth's network of informers.
Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.
Shelley explicitly evokes the Book of Revelation: the three British lords and Anarchy are the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.
And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw -
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'
Like the Mark of the Beast in Revelation on the one who is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.’
The above excerpts are from an article by John Mullan via The Guardian 8 July 2013
A must-read book
‘The Masque of Anarchy, a profound political poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in response to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, is a powerful call for nonviolent resistance against oppression. This poem, composed in the wake of tragic events that shook England, vividly depicts the horrors of tyranny and the hope of freedom. Shelley’s words inspire unity, courage, and peaceful defiance in the face of anarchy, murder, and corruption. With striking imagery and a message that resonates across generations, *The Masque of Anarchy* is as relevant today as it was during the era of its creation.
Published originally in 1832, this work marks a significant contribution to both the literary and political landscape of the 19th century. It offers readers a glimpse into Shelley’s vision of justice and equality, wrapped in a poetic style that is accessible yet profound. The poem's vivid characters, such as the personified figures of Anarchy, Murder, and Hope, continue to capture the imagination and fuel the fight for societal change.’-Leopold Classic Library
A must listen podcast
Political Poems: 'The Masque of Anarchy' by Percy Bysshe Shelley
'Shelley’s angry, violent poem was written in direct response to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819, in which a demonstration in favour of parliamentary reform was attacked by local yeomanry, leaving 18 people dead and hundreds injured. The ‘masque’ it describes begins with a procession of abstract figures – Murder, Fraud, Hypocrisy – embodied in members of the government, before eventually unfolding into a vision of England freed from the tyranny and anarchy of its institutions. As Mark and Seamus discuss in this episode, ‘The Masque of Anarchy’, with its incoherence and inconsistencies, amounts to perhaps the purest expression in verse both of Shelley’s political indignation and his belief that, with the right way of thinking, such chains of oppression can be shaken off ‘like dew’.
Mark Ford is Professor of English at University College, London, and Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford.
Listen to the podcast HERE
This is why it is so vital to speak truth to power today:
My pertinent question is: Would they have been different people, would they have acted differently, if they had been educated differently, with different values, ethos and emphasis? My own answer is an emphatic YES, given my nearly 50 years of teaching experience.
The Theft of the Century by the Most 'Educated Thieves'- All with MBAs and PhDs!
Britain Has Become a Sinking Ship of Systemic Corruption, Cronyism and Chumocracy
Calling all academic economists: What are you teaching your students?
Poetry to inspire us to become instrument of change, enabled and empowered to build a better world
In Search of Meaning and Purpose: The Poets' Guide to Economics
Reflecting on Life: My Childhood in Iran where the love of poetry was instilled in me
Poetry is the Education that Nourishes the Heart and Nurtures the Soul
- In Search of Meaning and Purpose: The Poets' Guide to Economics
- Neoliberal Economics: A house of ill repute, Built on a shifting sand.
- These are what I have learned from 45 years of teaching economics
- Make Economics ‘Kind’ and Build a Better World
- Make Economics 'People's Economics' and Build a Better World