J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship (1840)
As from their ancestral oak
Two empty ravens wind their clarion,
Yell by yell, and croak for croak;
When they scent the noonday smoke
Of fresh human carrion:—
As two gibbering night-birds flit
From their homes of deadly yew
Through the night to frighten it—
When the moon is in a fit,
And the stars are none or few:—
As a shark and dogfish wait
Under an Atlantic isle
For the Negroship whose freight
Is the theme of their debate,
Wrinkling their red gills the while:—
Are ye—two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
Two vipers tangled into one.
In 1820, Shelley began toying with the idea of publishing (as he put it) “a little volume of popular songs wholly political & destined to awaken & direct the imagination of the reformers.” As with other poems to be included in this collection, “To S. and C.” confronts some of the major events of the day with a bouncy, catchy rhythm, and it offers instruction through a collection of straightforward but powerful similes. Such a style of writing seems to affirm the view that England’s common people, and not just educated elites, have a part to play in the country’s reform movements.
Lord Sidmouth and Viscount Castlereagh, two prominent political figures and recurrent targets in Shelley’s poetry, are depicted in Shelley’s poem as birds of prey, safely concealed in “their ancestral oak” (read: England), or as the sharks following slave ships across the Atlantic. The implications of these powerful similes would be clear enough to readers of Shelley’s day: England’s countrymen and women were not merely subjects to a pair of unpredictable, warmongering tyrants; they were also their principle victims.
Commentary by Jon Kerr.