eagerly the details of the struggle for freedom at home, and in
1819 composed a group of poems designed to stir the masses from
their lethargy. Lord Liverpool's administration was in office,
with Sidmouth as Home Secretary and Castlereagh as Foreign
Secretary, a pair whom he thus pillories:

"As a shark and dog-fish wait
Under an Atlantic Isle,
For the negro ship, whose freight
Is the theme of their debate,
Wrinkling their red gills the while--

Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
Two vipers tangled into one."

The most effective of these bitter poems is 'The Masque of
Anarchy', called forth by the "Peterloo Massacre" at Manchester
on August 16, 1819, when hussars had charged a peaceable
meeting held in support of Parliamentary reform, killing six
people and wounding some seventy others. Shelley's frenzy of
indignation poured itself out in the terrific stanzas, written
in simplest language so as to be understood by the people,
which tell how

"I met a murder on the way--
He had a mask like Castlereagh--
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;