Once was lost -- Shelly Radical Poem

A radical poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley when he was just 18 years old can now be read in full despite having been kept under lock and key for the last 204 years.

The 172 line poem by the romantic poet expresses his outrage at the government, the Napoleonic war and the state of poverty in Britain among other things.

All copies were believed to have been destroyed after Shelley was kicked out of Oxford University - where he was an undergraduate — not long after it was written.

However, it turns out that Shelley gave one copy of the poem, which was published as a 10-page pamphlet, to his cousin Pilfold Medwin who took it to Italy.

Shelley begins his poem, written on the occasion of the Peterloo Massacre, Manchester 1819, with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time, "God, and King, and Law" – and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action: "Let a great assembly be, of the fearless, of the free". The crowd at this gathering is met by armed soldiers, but the protesters do not raise an arm against their assailants:

"Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.

And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there;
Slash, and stab, and maim and hew;
What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay,
Till their rage has died away:

Then they will return with shame,
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek:

Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!"