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Song to the Men of England Summary & Analysis
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Song to the Men of England Summary & Analysis
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “Song to the Men of England”

1Men of England, wherefore plough

2For the lords who lay ye low?

3Wherefore weave with toil and care

4The rich robes your tyrants wear?

5Wherefore feed and clothe and save

6From the cradle to the grave

7Those ungrateful drones who would

8Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?

9Wherefore, Bees of England, forge

10Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,

11That these stingless drones may spoil

12The forced produce of your toil?

13Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,

14Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?

15Or what is it ye buy so dear

16With your pain and with your fear?

17The seed ye sow, another reaps;

18The wealth ye find, another keeps;

19The robes ye weave, another wears;

20The arms ye forge, another bears.

21Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap:

22Find wealth—let no imposter heap:

23Weave robes—let not the idle wear:

24Forge arms—in your defence to bear.

25Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells—

26In halls ye deck another dwells.

27Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see

28The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

29With plough and spade and hoe and loom

30Trace your grave and build your tomb

31And weave your winding-sheet—till fair

32England be your Sepulchre.

  • “Song to the Men of England” Introduction

    • "Song to the Men of England" is English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's call to revolution. The poem's speaker asks the laborers of England a provocative question: why on earth do you go on working to enrich an oppressive upper class when the country's wealth is really in your hands? This radical message was deemed so dangerous that the poem was never published in Shelley's lifetime; it first appeared in print in the 1839 collection Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 20 years after Shelley wrote it (and 17 years after Shelley himself died).

  • “Song to the Men of England” Summary

    • People of England! Why should you work for the upper classes who are keeping you down? Why should you spend so much effort weaving the beautiful clothing your oppressors wear?

      Why should you take care of a bunch of selfish, useless aristocrats for their whole lives, people who want to use every last ounce of your energy—no, worse than that, to gobble up your very life force?

      Why, oh worker bees of England, do you fashion weapons, chains, and whips so that the otherwise helpless aristocrats can steal all the wealth they force you to you create?

      Do you have rest, security, peace, housing, food, and the pleasures of love? And if not, what exactly are you getting from this arrangement—what here is worth suffering for?

      The crops you plant, someone else harvests; the money you earn, someone else takes; the clothing you make, someone else wears; the weapons you make, someone else wields.

      So plant crops, but don't let your oppressors harvest them; make money, and don't let any freeloader take your earnings; make clothing, but don't give it to those who do no work; make weapons, and use them to defend yourselves!

      The alternative is to creep away into your sad, cramped little dwellings, while other people live in the beautiful houses you decorate. Why should you rebel against the very chains you forged? You'll only feel the weapons that you made hitting you.

      But if you don't rebel, then all your tools for farming and weaving will become tools for digging your own grave, building your own tombstone, and weaving your own shroud—until, at last, lovely England is nothing more than a mausoleum.

  • “Song to the Men of England” Themes

    • Theme Inequality, Exploitation, and Revolution

      Inequality, Exploitation, and Revolution

      Shelley’s “Song to the Men of England” is a revolutionary call to arms. The poem’s speaker cries out to all of England’s laboring people, asking them: why do you keep working yourselves to the bone to enrich an upper class that gives you nothing in return? By pointing out the dreadful inequalities that plague the country, the speaker suggests that power should be in the hands of working people and encourages workers to revolt against the oppressive “tyrants” who keep them down.

      The English working class, the speaker argues, is in a terrible predicament: all their “toil” (or hard work) only enriches the upper class. All the material wealth the working class produce, from the “seed” they sow (that is, the crops they farm) to the “rich robes” they weave, gets funneled directly to a ruling class of “tyrants” who do no work themselves. Meanwhile, working people themselves have nothing: “leisure, comfort, calm, / Shelter, food” and even “love” are denied them.

      But the speaker sees a solution: if working people would simply refuse to agree to this system anymore, they’d be perfectly self-sufficient. “Wherefore plough / For the lords who lay ye low?” the speaker asks; in other words, “Why work for the nobility who crush you underfoot?” The speaker advocates that the workers not only keep the “wealth” they produce rather than passing it along to bosses and aristocrats, but that they also “forge arms” (or fashion weapons) to rise up against their oppressors.

      Through observing that working people are the source of the country’s wealth—and thus could easily seize it for themselves—the speaker thus suggests that England’s true power is in the hands of the oppressed lower classes, and all that they need to do is reach out and take it.

      But there’s a warning here, too: if the people don’t rise up against their oppressors, the speaker concludes, England will become their “Sepulchre” (or tomb). In other words, they’ll be worked into early graves! Revolution, this poem argues, is a matter of life and death.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Song to the Men of England”

    • Lines 1-4

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

      Right away, it's clear that the "Song to the Men of England" is a polemic—that is, a piece of writing with a serious and angry point to make about the way society works. More than that, the poem is a call to arms, an invitation to revolution. And the people the speaker wants to inspire to revolt are no less than all the "Men of England."

      This doesn't actually mean every single Englishman, however. Rather, the speaker addresses those who "plough" and "toil": the working classes, the laborers on whose backs English farming and manufacturing rest.

      The speaker has some rhetorical questions for this group of people. Listen to the anaphora here:

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

      That repeated "wherefore" (or "why") makes it clear that the speaker has a lot of questions about the way the world currently works. Does it make sense, the speaker wonders, that one group of people should do all the work and another should enjoy all the profit (and "lay" the workers "low," treading them underfoot, for that matter)? The implied answer is absolutely not.

      The speaker's musical language in this first stanza suggests that this poem is intended as a battle cry, the sort of thing that rebellious workers could chant from a barricade. Besides the insistent alliteration of phrases like "the lords who lay ye low" and "rich robes," the poem uses memorable, chant-worthy rhymed couplets: plough / low, care / wear.

      Listen, too, to the meter in these first lines:

      Men of | England, | wherefore | plough
      For the | lords who | lay ye | low?

      This punchy, stress-first pattern is trochaic tetrameter—that is, lines of four trochees, metrical feet with a DUM-da rhythm. The speaker even cuts off the last unstressed syllable of these lines, so each line both begins and ends with a stress (and a bang). This is a poem made for yelling.

    • Lines 5-8

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

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    • Lines 9-12

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

    • Lines 13-16

      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?

    • Lines 17-20

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

    • Lines 21-24

      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.

    • Lines 25-28

      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.

    • Lines 29-32

      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.

  • “Song to the Men of England” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Metaphor

      The poem's central metaphor presents England as a beehive and its working classes as honeybees oppressed by useless aristocratic "drones."

      It's not too unusual to see workers represented as bees; the cliché "busy as a bee" underscores how closely people tend to connect bees with hard, productive work. The "Bees of England" to whom the speaker cries out here fit right into this mold. They're the honest, skilled working people who create the country's wealth with their "loom[s]" and their "plough[s]."

      What is a little different here is the way the poem presents the upper classes. Rather than suggesting that the aristocracy are the "queen bees," as people often do when they're using a society-as-beehive metaphor, the speaker calls them "stingless drones": that is, the male bees whose only job in a beehive is to fertilize the queen's eggs. While the "Bees of England" toil away, the speaker suggests, these "drones" live carefree lives of pleasure. But if they're "stingless," they're defenseless, and nothing should stop the worker bees from rising up against them.

      The poem also uses a handful of smaller incidental metaphors:

      • The upper classes, the speaker tells the workers, "drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood." These images present England's upper crust as parasites or vampires, feasting on the bodies of the laboring poor.
      • The laborers, meanwhile, get nothing back—not even "love's gentle balm," a metaphor that depicts love as a soothing, healing ointment.
      • If the people don't rise up against their oppressors, the speaker finally warns, then England will become nothing more than their "Sepulchre": in other words, not just their literal grave, but the tomb of their hopes, dreams, and dignity.

    • Rhetorical Question

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    • Juxtaposition

    • Parallelism

    • Anaphora

    • Polysyndeton

    • Alliteration

    • Assonance

    • Caesura

  • “Song to the Men of England” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Wherefore
    • Plough
    • Lay ye low
    • Ye
    • Toil
    • Drones
    • Scourge
    • Spoil
    • Balm
    • Sow
    • Reaps
    • Deck
    • Tempered
    • Glance
    • Plough and spade and hoe and loom
    • Winding-sheet
    • Sepulchre
    Wherefore

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Song to the Men of England”

    • Form

      "Song to the Men of England" uses a straightforward form to convey a powerful message. Shelley intended this poem to be a rallying cry, and over the course of its eight four-line stanzas (or quatrains), it builds a case for revolution using simple, memorable rhymed couplets and a driving, chant-like meter.

      In a lot of ways, this poem builds on a popular, working-class art form: the ballad. In Shelley's time (and long before!), folk songs were used to carry news and express political opinions; ballads could even be propaganda, as in the case of the many patriotic English ballads about the defeat of Napoleon, the would-be conqueror of all Europe. Shelley here chooses a simple, songlike form to spread, not patriotic fervor, but revolutionary sentiment.

    • Meter

      The meter in "Song to the Men of England" rings like hammer blows on an anvil.

      The poem is mostly written in trochaic tetrameter. That means that every line uses four trochees, metrical feet with a DUM-da rhythm. Here's how that sounds in the first two lines:

      Men of | England, | wherefore | plough
      For the | lords who | lay ye | low?

      Alert readers might notice that the speaker leaves off the final unstressed syllable of each line, so that lines both begin and end on a strong stress. This is a meter that's meant to grab readers by the collar! And that makes sense: the speaker's clear goal here is to incite revolution.

      But the speaker does introduce some variations later on in the poem. Listen to what happens in the fifth stanza, for example:

      The seed | ye sow, | anoth- | er reaps;
      The wealth | ye find, | anoth- | er keeps;
      The robes | ye weave, | anoth- | er wears;
      The arms | ye forge, | anoth- | er bears.

      Here, the speaker switches to a steady iambic rhythm. In other words, the lines are built from iambs, feet with a da-DUM rhythm. That choice gives this description of economic injustice a more insidious, warning tone than the earlier trochaic calls to action.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      The rhyme scheme of "Song to the Men of England" is meant to make this poem into a battle cry. Each quatrain uses two rhymed couplets in a row, like this:

      AABB

      What's more, almost all the rhyme words in the poem are punchy one-syllable words: "grave," "blood," "tomb," and so forth. The only exception is the poem's final, dramatic three-syllable word: "Sepulchre," or mausoleum. This stand-out word delivers a warning that revolution (in the speaker's eyes) is a matter of life and death.

      The poem's simple, memorable rhymes are catchy and even chantable; these couplets would sound right at home at a protest march! Note, though, that some of the rhymes here (including the first ones, "plough" and "low") are slant, which helps to give the poem a little texture.

  • “Song to the Men of England” Speaker

    • Readers don't learn anything about the speaker in the poem. Instead, the poem's focus is squarely on the speaker's message "to the Men of England."

      That said, the speaker is also a voice for Percy Bysshe Shelley himself. Shelley was no stranger to rabble-rousing. As a young man, he was kicked out of Oxford University for writing a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism; that was just the beginning of his career as a radical and a revolutionary. Here, his speaker advocates for the rights of working people, another of Shelley's pet causes. Shelley often wrote passionately against class tyranny (and distanced himself from his own wealthy, aristocratic background).

      The speaker's argument that the workers, being the people who actually produce wealth, hold all of society's real power, was a dangerously radical one in Shelley's time. But the passion in this speaker's voice suggests that this person is much more worried about the consequences of inertia than the consequences of rebellion. To this speaker, working people's rights and dignity demand that they rise up against the class system that keeps them down.

      Perhaps the speaker also sees themselves as something of a leader of the rebel forces: this poem places a lot of faith in poetry's power to motivate and inspire.

  • “Song to the Men of England” Setting

    • The poem is set in England at the time of its writing: 1819, when the country was suffering from a serious economic depression after Britain's 1815 victory in the expensive, bloody Napoleonic wars. The speaker exhorts the suffering, hungry working "men of England" to rise up against the ruling classes, keeping the wealth their labor produces for themselves rather than passing it along to the aristocrats at the top of the economic food chain.

      While this poem has a specific historical context, its message of rebellion and worker's rights means that readers might hear it as a call to the oppressed working classes of any time and place.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Song to the Men of England”

      Literary Context

      Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of a group of 19th-century British writers now known as the Romantics. Alongside notable figures like his wife Mary Shelley (the author of Frankenstein) and his friend Lord Byron, Shelley helped to transform literature forever.

      Shelley's work, like a lot of Romantic poetry, was concerned with deep feeling, the power of the natural world, and a desire for political and personal freedom. Where earlier Enlightenment-era writers like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift aspired to elegant phrasings and satirical wit, Shelley and many of his contemporaries preferred to write passionate verse that valued the mysteries and terrors of the imagination over crisp rationality.

      Shelley wrote "Song to the Men of England" in 1819, when England was going through a serious economic crisis in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. The poem was considered so inflammatory and dangerous that it didn't appear in print until Mary Shelley brought out the posthumous 1839 collection Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

      Shelley is often associated with Byron (a close friend and sometime collaborator) and Keats (a more distant acquaintance), not just because the three men were all important Romantic poets, but because they all died tragically young. Shelley, with particular drama, drowned in a shipwreck in the Bay of Naples after he insisted on sailing out in a storm. His short life, poetic death, radical convictions, and passionate verse all mean he's remembered as the quintessential Romantic hero, and he remains a beloved and widely-read poet to this day.

      Historical Context

      Shelley wrote this poem in 1819, when England was going through an economic crisis. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars (in which Britain struggled against the imperial ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-declared Emperor of France), England was left with too many laborers and not enough work—a problem made worse by the early phases of the Industrial Revolution. During this time, factory work began to overtake farming as the country's primary form of labor, many jobs were mechanized, and cities like London and Manchester became bigger and more powerful as people moved there from the countryside, looking for work. To top it all off, the infamous Corn Laws of 1815 taxed imported grain so intensely that many working people simply couldn't afford food.

      And these were only some of the reasons that England at this time was full of rebellious energy. The reigning king, George III, had lost his mind, and the people weren't too pleased to be governed by his dissolute young son the Prince Regent (who would become King George IV after his father finally died in 1820).

      Shelley, always politically radical, saw in this upheaval, discontent, and injustice an opportunity for an economic and social revolution. He intended "Song to the Men of England," with its simple language and polemical style, to become a rallying cry for the English working classes. While the poem was never published in his lifetime, Shelley still got what he wanted in a way: the poem remains a favorite with labor movements to this day.

  • More “Song to the Men of England” Resources

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