23/10/2026
As October enters its final week, we're sharing Shelley’s An Ode, Written October 1819 Before The Spaniards Had Recovered Their Liberty. 1819 was a tumultuous year globally, and a particularly prolific one for Shelley in a political sense. This was the year of Ode to the West Wind, England in 1819, The Masque of Anarchy, Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci, and Song to the Men of England, amongst many others.
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Arise, arise, arise!
There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread;
Be your wounds like eyes
To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.
What other grief were it just to pay?
Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they;
Who said they were slain on the battle day?
Awaken, awaken, awaken!
The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;
Be the cold chains shaken
To the dust where your kindred repose, repose:
Their bones in the grave will start and move,
When they hear the voices of those they love,
Most loud in the holy combat above.
Wave, wave high the banner!
When freedom is riding to conquest by:
Though the slaves that fan her
Be famine and toil, giving sigh for sigh.
And ye who attend her imperial car,
Lift not your hands in the banded war,
But in her defence whose children ye are.
Glory, glory, glory,
To those who have greatly suffered and done!
Never name in story
Was greater than that which ye shall have won.
Conquerors have conquered their foes alone,
Whose revenge, pride, and power they have overthrown:
Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.
Bind, bind every brow
With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine:
Hide the blood-stains now
With hues which sweet nature has made divine:
Green strength, azure hope, and eternity:
But let not the pansy among them be;
Ye were injured, and that means memory.
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The link below from The Encyclopedia of British Romanticism says: 'An Ode to the Assertors of Liberty' was composed in October 1819 as a response to the Peterloo Massacre. Shelley originally wanted to publish the poem as part of a collection following the incident and asked Leigh Hunt to provide names of “any bookseller who would like to publish a little volume of popular songs wholly political & destined to awaken & direct the imagination of the reformers.” After Hunt did not respond, the nine poems that he completed for publication went unpublished, besides 'An Ode.” :
Horsham Museum & Art Gallery Horsham Town Council HorshamArtists The Radical Tea Towel Company Keats-Shelley Association of America The Keats Shelley Warnham Parish
https://www.newsandtimes.com/ebr/pbs/pbs-poetry/puwop/an-ode/
Painting by W Heath and James Jenkins — Book: Martial achievements of Great Britain and her allies 1799-1815, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6034424
