our tempestuous day

Whereas Anna Laetitia Barbauld presents a deteriorating England in Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, a Poem, epitomized by the rose that "withers on its vigin thorns, Shelley is merely disgusted with the status quo of his homeland. In England in 1819, the state of affairs in England had apparently become exacerbated to the point of abject misery in the eight years since Barbauld's work, at least to the radical and rebellious perception of Shelley who would never dare include a "rose" in his scathing account. In "1819", there is no original goodness from which England is falling from; that is, unlike "1811" when Barbauld writes, " But fairest flowers expand but to decay", Shelley does not allude to any positive attributes. Instead, he reinfoces the qualities of malevolence that have staged a coup d'etat upon England. He writes that "Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow/Through public scorn, - mud from a muddy spring"; the incompetent princes are subject to a repetitive use of "dirty" adjectives. They are themselves tainted, being "mud", but that is not sufficient. They are offspring of a "muddy spring", which is a surprisngly benign description for "leechlike rulers" and "a despised, and dying King." Nonetheless, there is an absence of anything remotely benevolent in "1819".

This one-sided rage could be a result of the inner vileness of England that Barbauld notes. She writes, "The worm is in thy core, thy glories pass away." For Shelley, the worm alluded to in "1811" has proliferated to a point of absolute wretchedness, eating away any "glory" like a parasite. Hence, Shelley's atheism could presumably come from the apocalyptic times, a result of this gnawing worm. Indeed, "Religion (is) Christless, Godless - a book sealed". He needs a savior, in the form of a "glorious Phantom" to redeem his country by "illum(ing) our tempestous day"; essentially, by removing the worm and shedding light onto this age of darkness.