To The Men Of England Analysis

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat -- nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?

The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.

Sow seed, -- but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -- let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, -- let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defence to bear.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

With plough and spade and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre!

.: In-Depth Analysis :.

At first look, it is quite obvious that Percy Shelley’s “Song—To the Men of England” is meant to be an empowering anthem for the workers of England. However, upon closer examination, it becomes quite clear that Shelley’s message may be a little more complicated than it seems. The poem possesses many confusing paradoxes. Its language and tone also takes a disturbing twist in the end. With all these mysteries, Shelley’s intentions no longer seem to be clear. However, when all the pieces are put together, one can see that the negative and cynical aspects of Shelley’s poem serve to make “Song—To the Men of England” not just a simple cry of empowerment but an urgent, stirring call to action for the workers of the country.

“Song—To the Men of England” is dominated by a paradox. It first arises in lines seven and eight: “Those ungrateful drones who would Drain your sweat –nay, drink your blood?” In these lines, the speaker refers to the lords of the workers as “ungrateful drones.” A drone is defined as a male bee that does no work and no harm for it is sting less. So this part of the message is good and encouraging for the workers. It undermines the power of their lords. It insults the lords and makes a mockery of them. However, the idea of the lords being harmless and lazy is immediately followed by a very disturbing statement: “[the lords] would drain your sweat –nay, drink your blood…”

This statement completely changes the tone of the message. The tone becomes a little bit more dreary and discouraging. The diction gives rise to a macabre imagery. Now not only do the lords have power to drain the sweat from the workers, but they drink the workers’ blood! The lords are being compared to vampires, which are immortal bloodsuckers who render their victims powerless and dead.

The same paradoxical idea appears throughout the poem. The speaker refers to the lords as “tyrants” in lines four and twenty-one, indicating that their powers are absolute. Yet, he calls them “stingless drones” in line eleven and “idle” in line twenty-three, rendering them powerless and ridiculed.

So what are the lords? How does the speaker want the reader to see them? Are they powerless, lazy drones? Or are they tyrannical, immortal vampires capable of sucking the blood and life out of their victims?

Solving another mystery of the poem can answer these questions. In the last two stanzas, the poem takes a dramatic turn. The speaker shifts from commanding the workers to work for themselves and overthrow their tyrants to commanding the workers to hide in their “cellars, holes, and cells” (line twenty-five) and to build their graves. The last stanza, in particular, seems to insult the workers and surrenders hope for them. It ends the poem in such a dreary note, telling the workers to “Trace your grave, and build your tomb, And weave your winding-sheet, till fair England be your sepulcher!” (lines thirty to thirty-two). Now, it seems as if the speaker has been insulting the workers all along! He tells them that they allow themselves to be bullied by lazy, harmless men so that they may as well just build their own graves. His language shifts from romantic and sensitive “wherefores” in the beginning of the poem to harsh, dark monosyllabic words like “With plough and spade and hoe and loom, Trace your grave, and build your tomb” in the last stanza. By doing so, the speaker delivers a hammering affect. As a result, the last stanza creates a sense of urgency and anger, making its message particularly stand out from the rest of the poem.

So has the poem been trying to empower the workers all along or has it been contemptuously criticizing them? The answer is actually both. Though the last stanza serves to offset the rest of the poem, it does not overpower the initial message of empowerment. Instead, it actually emphasizes the message.

Throughout the beginning of the poem, the speaker is really pointing out the way things are. He recognizes the absurdity and unfairness of things. Then, in the middle he tells the workers how it should be:
“Sow seed, -but let not tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, -let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defence to bear” (lines twenty-one to twenty-four).
And finally, the last stanzas come. The last two stanzas again tell the workers of how things are: “Ye see The steel ye tempered glance on ye” (lines twenty-seven to twenty-eight). Basically, he tells the workers that they are digging their own graves by giving power to their initially harmless lords. Here, commanding them to dig their graves is different from the commands he gave them in lines twenty-one to twenty-four, By telling them to dig their graves, he is simply telling them what it is to continue with how things are.

What is actually happening is a juxtaposition of two ideas: of how things are, how things should be, and how things are again. In this way, the poet successfully delivers an image, a message. He successfully shows the contrast between the two ideas by sandwiching one inside the repetitions of the other. The middle idea, lines twenty-one to twenty-four, which is that of empowerment, then becomes like a bright, red flower sticking out amidst a dark, dreary landscape of reality. Furthermore, the last stanzas delivering the final repetition of the initial imagery are so dark and urgent with a hint of insult that it stirs the emotion of the reader. A worker reading the poem would have been angered by the last stanza and be stirred to follow true message of the poem in order to prevent the ending from becoming a reality.

| Posted on 2007-10-07 | by a guest