A peaceful moment or rather a hopeful moment

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England in 1819
Percy Bysshe Shelley (some lines edited)

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.


A beach in Sardinia.
Shelly died in July 1822 (aged 29) drowning at sea near Sardinia. His body was cremated on the beach.
Despite the poet’s somber tone in the above poem, in a “startling burst of optimism,” the last two lines express hope.