Shelley seems to forget sometimes when he's supposed to be pretending that a character is speaking and not himself, but it's still pretty stirring stuff and plenty accurate for the same targets today. ( )

The greatest satire on social and political inequity, hence pointed at U.S. 2017. "Whence, thinkst thou, kings and parasites arose?/ Whence that unnatural line of droves, who heap/ Toil and unvanquishable penury/ On those who build their palaces, and bring/ Their daily bread?--From vice, black loathsome vice." Seems to me the Parasitic Party that runs the U.S. plans to pass the most parasitic budget, one inconceivable to all prior generations. But Shelley also consoles, no need for religious punishment of black vice: "There needeth not the hell that bigots frame/ To punish those who err: earth in itself/ Contains at once the evil and the cure."

Shelley's most astonishing lines meant to console:
"From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose,
Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe,
Whose grandeur his debasement..."
"Yon populous city, rears its [Trumpster] tower
And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops
Of sentinels [security]...The Dweller there
Cannot be free and happy; hearest thee not
The curses of the fatherless, the groans
Of those who have no friend? He passes on:
The King, the wearer of a gilded [throne/chain]
That binds his soul to objectness, the fool
Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave
Even to basest appetites--that man
Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles
At the deep curses which the destitute
Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
Pervades his heart when thousands groan..."

The poet is not a fan of business:
"Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange
Of all that human art or nature yield..
Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade*
No solitary virtue dares to spring;
But poverty and wealth with equal hand
Scatter their withering curses...
Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,
The signet of its all-enslaving power
Upon a shining ore, called it gold...
The iron rod of penury compels
Her wretched slave to bow and knee to wealth."
"A life of horror from the blighty bane
Of commerce: whilst the pestilence that springs
From unenjoying sensualism, has filled
All human life with Hydra-headed woes."

I read and taught this yearly from the Complete Works, vol I (NY: Gordian, 1968)
in my English Lit Survey, semester 2, sophomore year.
But 2017 makes its meaning precise.

Shelley died at 29, sailing his custom-made craft past the islands in the Gulf of Spezia, which we saw on a lovely but darkening day. The house where he roomed is open for visitors at certain hours.
His wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley created a monster, not human like the monster Shelley depicts in Queen Mab. With the Brontes, the Shelleys the most literary English family, although there are many others. ( )