Читать книгу Selected Poetry and Prose - Percy Bysshe Shelley - Страница 20

I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan

To think that a most unambitious slave,

Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave

Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne

Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer

A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept

In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre,

For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,

Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,

And stifled thee, their minister. I know

Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,

That Virtue owns a more eternal foe

Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,

And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.