Posterity will ne'er survey
 A nobler scene than this.
 Here lie the bones of Castlereagh.
 Stop traveller, and piss.

I was reminded of this when I saw it in a usenet post by my good friend Shakib Otaqui.

Byron sounds off about one of the most unpopular and reviled politicians of his era - a man who was forced to resign and spent the last fifteen years of his life a mental wreck before he committed suicide by cutting himself with a penknife.

If you want to rest in peace, never piss off a poet, is all I can say about the poem.

Profile of Lord Castlereagh -
http://proni.nics.gov.uk/records/private/castlere.htm

Castlereagh also had to face the wrath of Shelley, who wrote “The Mask of Anarchy”, blaming the massacre at St.Peters Fields on Lord Castlereagh and his fellow minister Lord Sidmouth.

That is almost biblical, and (I think) compares Castlereagh and Sidmouth to an evil version of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

However, it is, unfortunately, a bit too long for minstrels, weighing in at a whole 91 stanzas (plus a couple more, given different manuscripts / editions of this grand poem).

Anyway, it is available online at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/FrankenDemo/PShelley/anarchy.html

srs

[Martin adds: The last line seems like a parody of Wordsworth’s “Stop here, or gently pass”, from ‘The Solitary Reaper’. Byron’s sarcasm is a touch heavy-handed, but, as always, a fun read - he certainly has a much better ear than the oft-reviled (at least here on Minstrels <g>) Shelley, whose ‘Mask of Anarchy’ made me wince with the sheer dysphony and clumsiness of the verse. I mean, the man rhymed “Italy” with “sea”! In the first two lines, no less!! Sorry, I’ll stop now (:]