Mask of Anarchy

Percy Bysshe Shelley is more widely known as one of the great Romantic Poets. Yet in his short life he was politically active and in writing The Masque of Anarchy in 1819 and basing it on preceding events at the bloody massacre at Peterloo he helps to give voice to alternative notion of non violent resistance. Although not published until after his death it remains a defining poem of its time.