All the second-wave Romantics were reds at least in their youth, with the possible exception of Coleridge. Shelley and Keats of course had nothing but youth. Byron stayed red. Wordsworth went over to the other side, ended up Poet Laureate, writing bad poems (one in praise of capital punishment!!)in his old age.
Queen Mab, The Masque of Anarchy, and Shelley's other radical poems were, after his death, quoted or read aloud, memorized and treasured, by several generations of radical English workers, according to E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class,
--- On Thu, 1/15/09, Bill Quimby <wquimby at embarqmail.com> wrote:
> From: Bill Quimby <wquimby at embarqmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] The reds buy Shelley (Was Re: How Politics Ruined My Life:
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, January 15, 2009, 1:09 PM
> This reminiscing of Shelley should not pass without a
> posting
> of this section from his poem "Queen Mab", which
> recognizes
> man's potential to be thwarted by the grinding-down of
> capitalism.
> Queen Mab is thought to have been completed in 1812, four
> years
> before the Peterloo Massacre.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ‘The iron rod of penury still compels
> Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,
> And poison, with unprofitable toil,
> A life too void of solace to confirm
> The very chains that bind him to his doom.
> Nature, impartial in munificence,
> Has gifted man with all-subduing will.
> Matter, with all its transitory shapes,
> Lies subjected and plastic at his feet,
> That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread.
> How many a rustic Milton has passed by,
> Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,
> In unremitting drudgery and care!
> How many a vulgar Cato has compelled
> His energies, no longer tameless then,
> To mould a pin or fabricate a nail!
> How many a Newton, to whose passive ken
> Those mighty spheres that gem infinity
> Were only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven
> To light the midnights of his native town!
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I add the note that his biographers generally state
> Shelley's
> radical tilt to be due directly to his (was it
> father-in-law?) William
> Godwin.
>
> - Bill
>
> Eric Beck wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:25 AM, Doug Henwood
> <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >> On Jan 15, 2009, at 12:03 PM, Eric Beck wrote:
> >>
> >>> Indeed. I always thought Byron was a shallow
> fop until I read Don
> >>> Juan. Incredible. How come no one seems to
> take him seriously?
> >> Because he was funny and sexy?
> >
> > That sounds right to me.
> > ___________________________________
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> >
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