Edvenson Consulting

Subject:  Iraq and Afghanistan's fragility-stability

We read with a combination of tension, hope and resignation the latest installments of diplomacy and intervention, all designed to assure that economic stability and a semblance of democratic governance take hold in these war-torn lands. 

So it was with special interest that I recently came across this poem, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, discovering in it some truth that reminded me of those who use faith as a blunt weapon and virtue as a costume.  With apologies, I would like to share this short poem, for the reader's enjoyment, an early poem written probably before 1816.

Feelings of a Republican On The Fall of Bonaparte

I hated thee, fallen tyrant!  I did groan

To think that a most unambitious slave,

Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave

Of Liberty.  Thou mightst have built thy throne

Where it had stood even now:  thou didst prefer

A frail and bloody pomp, which time has swept

In fragments towards oblivion.  Massacre,

For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,

Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear and Lust,

And stifled thee, their minister.  I know

Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,

That Virtue owns a more eternal foe

Than force or fraud:  old Custom, legal Crime,

And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of time.

-P.B. Shelley