The poor live "'midst luxury, wanting daily bread: / While hard unfeeling instruments of state, / With iron bosoms aggravate their fate"
— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and W. Clarke, By W. Pople
Date
1810
Metaphor
The poor live "'midst luxury, wanting daily bread: / While hard unfeeling instruments of state, / With iron bosoms aggravate their fate"
Metaphor in Context
But Europe has it's kings exempt from thought;
Who feel no misery by their madness wrought;
Nimrods who laugh, and stun us with a joke;
While death on millions drives the fatal stroke;
While from fair empires freedom far is fled;
Oppressed, their subjects; and their glory, dead;
Their poor, 'midst luxury, wanting daily bread:
While hard unfeeling instruments of state,
With iron bosoms aggravate their fate.
Know such--on tyrants, in the future world,
The last excess of penal fire is hurled:
Know such--if not insensible to fame;
Some great historian all his rights will claim;
Time to his pen shall full expression give;
Than Belsham's bolder, while his heroes live.
Some godlike poet will his ardour join;
Paint sceptered culprits in his glowing line:
To late posterity the strain shall flow;
And deathless verse avenge a nation's woe.
Bishop's Gate; by Windsor Great Park.
Who feel no misery by their madness wrought;
Nimrods who laugh, and stun us with a joke;
While death on millions drives the fatal stroke;
While from fair empires freedom far is fled;
Oppressed, their subjects; and their glory, dead;
Their poor, 'midst luxury, wanting daily bread:
While hard unfeeling instruments of state,
With iron bosoms aggravate their fate.
Know such--on tyrants, in the future world,
The last excess of penal fire is hurled:
Know such--if not insensible to fame;
Some great historian all his rights will claim;
Time to his pen shall full expression give;
Than Belsham's bolder, while his heroes live.
Some godlike poet will his ardour join;
Paint sceptered culprits in his glowing line:
To late posterity the strain shall flow;
And deathless verse avenge a nation's woe.
Bishop's Gate; by Windsor Great Park.
Categories
Provenance
Searching "bosom" and "iron" in HDIS (Poetry)
Citation
Text from The Poetical Works of Percival Stockdale. 2 vols. (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and W. Clarke, By W. Pople, 1810).
Date of Entry
06/08/2005
