Bysshe!

Emily Ghods over at The New Criterion notes the rediscovery of a lost early work of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, apparently written shortly before he was booted out of Oxford.

I find Shelley to be the most tediously annoying of the early British Romantics especially when he gets political, as he does in this poetic rant sparked by the jailing of a radical Irish journalist. A sample:

Millions to fight compell’d, to fight or die
In mangled heaps on War’s red altar lie . . .
When legal murders swell the lists of pride;
When glory’s views the titled idiot guide.

Man must assert his native rights, must say
We take from Monarchs’ hand the granted sway;
Oppressive law no more shall power retain,
Peace, love, and concord, once shall rule again,
And heal the anguish of a suffering world;
Then, then shall things which now confusedly hurled,
Seem Chaos, be resolved to order’s sway,
And error’s night be turned to virtue’s day –

Dude, wouldn't it have been easier just to write "Arms are for hugging"?

Actually, I do owe ol' Percy for one thing: In The Code of the Woosters, Bertie Wooster is discussing the character of Gussie Fink-Nottle, that fish-faced, spineless, newt-fancier, with Madeline Bassett, his soupy, sappy betrothed:

I remembered something Jeeves had once called Gussie. 'A sensitive plant, what?'

'Exactly. You know your Shelley, Bertie.'

'Oh, am I?'

That little bit of throwaway always makes me smile when I come across it.

(When Shelley wasn't being pompous, he was being treacly. Here's his original "The Sensitive Plant" if you can stand it.)